Email & SMS Marketing

While most of the talk revolves around social media these days, research shows email is still king when it comes to attracting customers for your business.

Social media is an extremely valuable tool, particularly for branding, customer interaction and engagement, but it’s not the best way to drive sales. According to a recent study by analytics firm Custora, customer acquisition via email has quadrupled in the last four years and now accounts for almost 7% of customer acquisitions, while Facebook and Twitter lag some distance behind. Organic search is the most powerful acquisition channel, accounting for 16% of customers acquired. Importantly, customers that originate via email also tend to shop and spend more than customers from Facebook or Twitter.

Email is effective because it’s permission-based. The people on your email list have given you the go-ahead to send them messages – they’ve ‘opted in’. And, with the prevalence of smartphones and tablets, they’re always listening. In fact, email is the number one activity for people on their phones. People check their emails constantly, wherever they are, and that enables you to stay connected.

Mobile devices can make email an even more powerful marketing and customer-acquisition channel. By cleverly combining SMS with email marketing businesses are generating exponential returns on their marketing efforts. A simple in-store display that reads “text us your email address to get 10% off your next purchase” can effortlessly grow your email subscriber list while helping you to build greater customer loyalty.

The rub – rather than chasing the latest ‘shiny object’ businesses should invest more in email. Email works and that makes it more important than ever. Ultimately those who leverage email most effectively will be the big winners.

Email marketing works.

1. It has a large, engaged audience – 72% of internet users use email daily. In total there were 2.5 billion email users worldwide in 2013.
2. It drives revenue – People who buy products marketed through email, spend more than non-email purchasers. Email’s ROI is far greater than that of search advertising and better than any other direct marketing channel.
3. It reduces costs – Email is significantly cheaper compared with direct mail as well as other more modern forms of direct marketing such as sms or pay-per-click.
4. It’s measurable – It’s easy to gain insight into what has and hasn’t worked via metrics such as click through rates, open rates, bounces and unsubscribe rates, so you can improve future campaign results.
5. It offers immediate results – Approximately 76.9% of emails that are opened are done so within 24 hours of being sent. One third of these are opened in the first hour.
6. It’s targeted and personal – Combine the benefits of highly segmented and targeted database marketing, with powerful one-to-one personalisation.

Why use an e-marketing system?

Achieve more – Do things standard email programs can’t. Using our purpose built technology you can create compelling branded emails; send large volumes of email quickly; track and report on email performance; operate in a spam compliant framework; and immediately access upgraded technology.

Perform better – Do things easier with best practice features. Choose from pre-formatted HTML email templates; easily personalise message content; schedule and automate triggered emails; add subscribers via branded web forms; manage bounces and unsubscribes.

Reach more customers – Get more messages delivered to the inbox with professionally maintained delivery performance; benefit from a high sender reputation; identify potential delivery issues sooner; protect your own server performance.

Learn from the experts – Achieve email marketing success sooner with our educational whitepapers, metrics reports, case studies, online training and support.

Save money – Avoid internal costs with a reduced total cost of ownership. We handle all of the systems maintenance and administration, data and email servers and deliverability resources.

Optimise results – Boost results by accessing our value-add services such as; web and mobile design, reputation marketing, search engine optimisation, social media marketing, and pay-per-click campaign management.

Getting started…

Building a brand, promoting your business and measuring results has never been easier. Whether it’s a monthly email newsletter or an integrated email, SMS and social media marketing campaign we can help.