Last week we covered the obsolescence of telemarketing and door-to-door sales. Now it seems that the first digital medium has started to venture in that direction. Email marketing is becoming increasingly difficult to implement successfully.
As people use their email as a quick means of checking communication and as a substitute for paper mail, it is vital to not become junk mail. Many businesses’ email campaigns are the digital version of pre-approved credit card applications. They are constantly being delivered and offer no real value to the customer.
One important thing to consider when using email marketing is that you are not only competing with people in your industry for customers. You are also competing with every other company that markets with email. Most people don’t want dozens and dozens of subscriptions to companies’ email campaigns, and they will whittle it down to just a handful of important ones. So, offering fantastic value and keeping your frequency relatively low are absolutely essential.
Every email has to provide some sort of value. As soon as customers begin to receive emails with no value to them, they begin to consider unsubscribing from that email list. I cannot stress enough how important it is to include great value to customers in every blog post.
In addition to the need to send engaging and value-packed emails to customers, it is illegal to add people to an email list without permission. This means that people need to sign up and they can unsubscribe at any time. Growing an email list requires other forms of marketing specifically trying to get people to subscribe, and then retaining the old customers while constantly trying to entice new ones to join.
The final slippery slope is sending great deals too frequently. Many companies, especially in the food industry, fall victim to this mistake. Sending too many deals of 50% off, buy-one-get-one, or comparable offers creates the impression that your normal prices are higher than they need to be. Most companies will not put items on sale if they are losing money on them, and customers know that. Constantly having items for 50% off will give people an incentive to only buy from you when things are on sale. This cuts into your profit margins, takes some of the credibility from your business, and is a very bad habit to get into.
Despite its many downfalls, email marketing is still extremely powerful. When used correctly it is possible to create massive amounts of value for customers while creating profits and increased foot traffic for your business. It is still widely used and offers great value but is only applicable in certain industries.
To find out if email marketing is a good fit for your business, click the button below, fill out the survey, and schedule a FREE meeting with me. At our meeting we will discuss your current marketing efforts, what I think could be implemented from a digital standpoint, and what the logical next steps are. To take the first step towards improving the marketing efforts of your business click below!