Though there’s always something new to test with your digital marketing strategy, there are some tried-and-true tactics that should be at the center of your long-term online marketing efforts—like email capture.
Email marketing provides lasting value for targeted advertising and lead generation efforts, which means growing your email list should be a priority. Let’s dive deeper into the reasons for making a significant investment into email capture on an ongoing basis.
You Own Your Email List
Unfortunately, with most digital marketing channels, you’re not always in control. Facebook, Google, and other platforms can make drastic changes at a moment’s notice that can make it more difficult for brands to reach their audiences online.
Facebook is the most extreme example of this. In the early 2010s, many brands grew their digital presences almost exclusively through Facebook because it was a business-friendly social media platform. Then, Facebook switched to a “pay-to-play” model, which meant brands lost their primary channel for reaching their audiences with nothing else to fall back on.
For these reasons, building your own email list is incredibly valuable. Not only have your subscribers opted in, but you also have control when it comes to reaching them since you choose who sees emails and when.
Email Delivers Conversions
Putting time into building email lists isn’t always the most exciting work, but email marketing is incredibly effective and well worth the investment.
According to an eMarketer study, email marketing was the most effective digital marketing strategy for both acquiring and retaining customers, and results weren’t particularly close. 81% of marketers said email marketing was the best tactic for acquiring customers, with organic search in second at 62%. And 80% said email was the best tactic for retention, with social media in a distant second at 44%.
Some other notable stats about the effectiveness of email include:
- $44 ROI on every $1 spent (leading the industry)
- 4.8% average CTR with transactional emails
- 17.75% of the time, a purchase is made when someone clicks through on an email
What this shows is that email marketing is the most action-oriented and cost-effective digital marketing tactic at our disposal. None of this is to say other channels aren’t as important or effective in their own right. After all, growing an email list relies on traffic coming to the site through organic search, social media, paid search, and more, and all of these channels drive customer acquisition directly or are part of the process.
The takeaway should be that email marketing can’t be ignored. Nothing compares when it comes to getting customers to take action.
Bring Your Customers Back
The chances of a customer converting the first time they visit your website is highly unlikely. In fact, a recent study found that the average customer visits a website five times before making a purchase. What this means for your online marketing efforts is that you should be utilizing remarketing ads through social media, Google, and—of course—email to keep your brand top of mind for potential customers.
The one limitation for bringing customers back to your site through email is that they’ll need to be subscribed with your email list. This is another reason why growing your list on an ongoing basis is so important. But keep in mind that email will convert at a much higher rate and will be much less expensive compared to other remarketing avenues.
Along with creating campaigns to promote discounts and introduce new products or services, email marketing allows you to automate the process for reaching customers when they’re most likely to buy. Abandoned cart emails, product remarketing emails, and lapsed customer emails are all great examples of this. Having the ability to send customers an email with a discount to checkout or as a reminder to order the product they looked at but didn’t add to their cart can be incredibly powerful as a sales tool.
Email marketing’s ability to engage customers and generate action makes it a critical component of your digital marketing strategy. This makes continuing to grow your audience through email a top priority. Keep testing new ways and optimizing your process to convert visitors into email subscribers. It’ll help you convert them into customers over and over again.
Need help putting together an email strategy for your brand? Hurrdat offers Email Marketing Management services to help you build out email marketing campaigns for lead capture, sales promotions, and more.
