The Power of Email Marketing Campaigns in Dorset

It’s still surprising how few businesses are utilising email marketing – whether they be located in Dorset or anywhere in the world for that matter.

Whenever our parent company Authentic Style works with a new client (often in Dorset based) on their web design project, we can usually predict with 95% certainty that they aren’t email marketing yet.

Here are some stats that show why those clients are missing out (the full list of statistics is available here).

Email marketing has an ROI of 3800%

You are 6x more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than you are from a tweet.

A message is 5x more likely to be seen in email than via Facebook.

Email ROI was 28.5% compared to 7% for direct mail.

About 53% of emails are opened on mobile devices

So, now that I’ve got your attention, let’s dive in and learn more about the power of email marketing campaigns and how you can use them to get ahead…

What exactly is email marketing?

Let’s start with the basics.

Email marketing is essentially the process of sending out branded emails to your customer base (or any other kind of list that you’ve built) that promotes your business and the services you offer.

Messages can also include valuable content and free advice for your customers – and it’s often these kinds of email marketing campaigns that get the best response.

Why should your business start email marketing?

People spend so much time in their email inbox these days it’s frightening.

True, there’s a lot of noise that you’ll have to cut through if your message is to stand out, BUT statistics show that the return on investment for email marketing is huge – 3,800% according to DMA.

You probably also know that it’s much easier to sell a product to an existing customer than a new one and this is the main benefit with email marketing – you can easily ping out promotions, special offers and news about new services your company is offering and your audience is much more likely to take notice.

Is email marketing expensive?

No. It’s really cost effective.

A ROI Email Marketing Case Study showed that for every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38 in ROI.

One platform – MailChimp – even allows you to build a list of up to 2,000 customers for free. With a deal like that to take advantage of, there’s a great reason to get started with email marketing!

Getting started

Getting started is easy. We’d recommend contacting us to discuss your options, but essentially you need to consider the following:

• The platform – Generally, we believe the best two are MailChimp and Campaign Monitor. If you work with the right expert, they can integrate your email template with either of these platforms so that the content is fully editable by you, allowing you or your staff, to create the content for your emails.
• The content – Spend some time thinking about what kind of content you’ll be sending out. This will determine how your email template needs to be laid out and how flexible it might need to be.
• The frequency – How often will you send to your list? Committing to a sending frequency is important. We’d recommend once every two weeks or once a month – often enough to be remembered, but not too often to offend.
• DIY or expert? – Finally, do you want to do it yourself, or work with an expert who can design, develop and integrate a template you can use for your email marketing campaigns? There can be some strange nuances with various email clients and the way they display your email template. so if time is tight, working with an expert will be best. Mobile is also an essential consideration these days, with over 50% of emails being viewed on mobile devices. You might need an expert to advise you here.

So, based on the potential return you can get from email marketing, it’s a pretty straight-forward to get the ball rolling, right?

Essentially, you can either do it yourself (if you’ve got the time), or work with an expert who can design, implement and test a custom designed email marketing template to match your brand.

Here’s how to make your email marketing reeeally effective…

If you want to, you can kick things up a notch with your email marketing and use it as part of your sales process.

How does that work?

Let’s say you run a Law practice and you’re looking for more clients for your Commercial Property team.

You could put together a free piece of content (what we call a lead magnet) – e.g. a short PDF report containing some valuable content your potential customers will appreciate – for example “10 things most Solicitors won’t tell you about buying commercial property”.

You’d then put this download in a prominent place on your website in exchange for the visitors name and email address.

When a visitor downloads the PDF guide, their details then go into your “leads” list in MailChimp, and within MailChimp (this is where things get clever) you can set up an automation series to keep them engaged.

Automation what?

Once someone’s on your list you can then set up MailChimp to automatically send out emails to them at a frequency of your choosing.

This is great, because if you create an automation series full of amazingly high value, actionable content, you can position you and your company as an expert and when the time’s right, sell them on a particular service.

So now you want to get started?

If you’re based in Dorset, or anywhere for that matter, we’d love to help you with your email marketing campaigns.

We have over 10 years experience designing, building and testing HTML emails with MailChimp for clients in Dorset, and also as far away as Saudi Arabia.

Get in touch to have a conversation and get the ball rolling. We can usually get you up and running, utilising email marketing, within a week.