Internet marketers report that they get the highest return of investment from email marketing than from almost any other part of their strategy.
What makes email marketing one of the most powerful tools you can use in your business? Why should it be the cornerstone of your marketing plan? It is email that lets you actually directly connect to real people, eyeball to eyeball.
For the most part, people have been overwhelmed with all the noise out there. The explosion of information over the Internet has forced people to filter out all that overload to get on with their own agendas.
Email marketing, when it’s done right, has a way of cutting through and actually reaching the customer, even if he has put most other methods sent his way on ignore. The inbox becomes a place where you can get his attention when nothing else works.
Most marketers have a mindset of wanting to be noticed. They want to get their names out there. They push their product or service, with the end result of wanting their brand to be remembered over that of other competitors. This in-your-face type of advertising takes the form of newspaper/magazine/poster and billboards, television ads barraging potential users to the point that they just don’t see it any more.
If email marketing remains so effective, then open rates become more vital than ever.
According to Jonathan Yefet in a November, 2015 Business 2 Community article, the professionals atVenturaBeat conducted a study of the effects of personalization in email marketing. Their survey showed overwhelmingly that personalization improved open rates.
Of those marketers responding:
- 21.3% experienced an open rate increase of 5-10%.
- 20.8% showed a gain of 15-20%.
- 4.5% saw a jump of 50-70%.
Methods of personalization can go so much further than simply addressing a recipient by name. Employing information from social profiles, demographics such as age and gender, web browsing history, and engaging in back-and-forth communication serve to push those open rates even higher.
When it comes to email marketing, you need to keep doing what you’re doing. It works. To make it more effective, make it personal.
