For many marketers and ecommerce sellers, email is a powerful but very economical tool.
Once people have signed up to your list, you can market to them repeatedly, typically at no extra cost to you.
In short, you can maximize customer sales – and increase your customer lifetime value – just by sending emails!
You can broadcast your upcoming product launch, give them special discounts for being a subscriber, remind them to check out the items in their shopping cart, upsell or cross-sell a product they might like, and so much more.
Do emails really still work for marketing?
Email is older than the Internet itself, but that doesn’t mean it’s antiquated.
Granted, early email was nothing like it is today, but the technology’s only gotten better through the decades.
Nowadays, email isn’t just used for sending and receiving messages.
It’s also used to sign up for various web services, such as social media, online banking, ecommerce sites, and more.
In short, it’s a big part of our online identity!
Key facts that support the use of emails for marketing:
- DMA’s 2019 study shows that every $1 spent in email marketing results in about $42 in sales – a massive 4100% ROI! (source)
- In 2020 alone, there were 4 billion email users worldwide – that’s about half of the world’s population! And this number is expected to go up to 4.6 billion in 2025. (source)
- In terms of emails sent per day, that number stands at around 306 billion in 2020! Yeah, a lot of that’s probably spam, but still, there’s no denying how important email is to both marketer and consumer. (source)
So, to answer the question, yes, emails still work great for marketing!
Does email marketing help with customer retention?
Customer acquisition is obviously important to any business.
But a lot of business owners make the mistake of focusing only on acquiring new customers and end up relegating customer retention to the back burner.
Building long-term relationships is key to business success. Email marketing is simply one channel where you can nurture your relationship with both prospects and paying customers.
A few interesting facts about customer retention:
- Retaining an existing customer costs up to 5x less than acquiring new customers, meaning it’s cheaper to retain than to acquire a new customer. (source)
- Customer loyalty will pay off handsomely in the future. A seemingly insignificant 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by 25% to 95%. (source)
- Existing customers are 60-70% more likely to buy from you again, while new prospects are at 5-20%, so it definitely makes a lot of sense to include current customers in your marketing campaigns! (source)
In the next chapters, you will learn how exactly you can use email marketing to help with your customer retention strategies – and make more sales in the process!
