Why email marketing is here to stay
This blog will look to explain why I believe that email marketing is still a must have marketing string in your bow.
So email is getting on a bit now eh? Must be ready for some shiny new toy, as I blog about disruptive technologies on here maybe you would expect me to be telling you email is dead?
Just because we have advancements in technology, it does not mean it is always best. If that were the case we would all own a segway and be whizzing around on them.
But with the rise of social media and video you may have been forgiven to think that email had has its day.
This is simply not the case, email is still an essential part of your marketing strategy. Is email as effective as it was back in the day? No, its not, at first email had amazing open rates and astonishing conversion rates. They we just get spammed the hell of out for years and trust depleted.
However today, we have all kinds of filters and spam protection in place, and if a rouge email gets through we know what to look out for in general.
So why do I still feel its so vital? As today's buyers journeys are taking place over a longer period of time and across multiple devices  the need to build trust and rapport quickly is imperative.
If you follow the basic understanding of permission based marketing and you can give a prospect a really good reason for wanting to join your email list, they will subscribe and give you permission to communicate with them.
Not only is that a powerful privileged position but direct access to their most prized workspace, the place that can make or break your day, week or even year in a ping  - the inbox. We are governed by our inbox and more often than not controlled by it, rightly or wrongly.
If you now have permission to enter that sacred place you must not abuse it and understand it.
So why do you want to be able to email them? Common to popular belief, not everyone wants to buy your product or service right away. Shocking I know right. So by gaining permission to enter their inbox, you can now giv e them reasons to believe you are the right people and company to solve their problems.
There are lots of things that we can discuss about great email marketing in another blog, but for today understand this:
The first email is the most important.
If you made a promise of a free download deliver it, and then set the expectation for the next email.
Over deliver in that first email and give them something so valuable they remember you and your emails.
Then when the 2nd email is delivered you will survive the early morning cull. The early morning cull you say?
We all do it, here let me explain. When you wake in the morning the first thing most people do (wrongly or rightly) is reach for their mobile phone. FOMO (fear of missing out) kicks in and we want to be sure we are up to date with everything. We then get to our email and compete the early morning cull which is a series of swiping and deleting those email which are not important, this the free's up the inbox for the important stuff. You do this right?
So now you have to be sure to survive the early morning cull and make sure the recipient wants to receive your email and read it.
Gaining trust and educating your prospect through email marketing will keep you top of mind and returning to your website to learn more and when they are ready then buy from you.
Invest in email software and then invest the time to understand it and get the most of out of it.
Well defined auto-responders are like quality sales people working on your behalf and deliver amazing value on auto pilot. The trick is to keep testing them and see which emails are working and change the ones that are not.
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Author- Speaker - Consultant. Passionate about all things digital.