Don’t Have an Email List? Here’s Why You Should
The terror begins when you open your inbox
Hundreds of digital letters pour out of your computer and into your office, drowning you in messages you don’t want to read. At least, that’s what it feels like. That may be why you’re hesitant to start a mailing list for your own company.
What if someone else goes through that experience every day, and your message gets lost among several others? The truth is people can ignore any marketing you do — print and digital. Potential and current customers can scroll past your posts on their social media feeds, turn the page on the ad you put in a magazine, and drive by your billboard on the road.
But stopping it altogether is dangerous, and email marketing is harder to ignore. Here’s three reasons why:
-
Email marketing is direct marketing.
On the scale of commitment to a company, email marketing is next to a physical address and a mobile phone number. Your subscribers are there because they really like to hear about you.
So give them what they want! Ninety-one percent of online consumers have an email account that they check every day. Add that statistic to the fact that most people sync up their email accounts with their mobile phones and get notifications in real time. 
Say you’re a local café in town and you have a lot of discounts and seasonal items that change, and you want to let people know about them.
Setting up an email list will immediately notify your customers of your changes. You may even see an increase in business when they realize how much money they can save or see something new they can get just because of that email.
-
Not everyone checks or engages with social media all the time.
Social media is scheduled. Feeds move so quickly that it’s a gamble to choose the right time to post and what to tag it with. After all that hard work, many people may not even see or interact with your company’s post.
Especially for some of your clients who don’t have certain types of social media accounts, but still rely on email, email marketing is a crucial tool in reaching your audience. Analytics are available to you as well.
Depending on what program you use, you can tell how many people have subscribed, unsubscribed, opened your email and followed the links inside.
-
Email marketing saves time and money.
On many social media accounts, you have to pay for an advertisement, and many users download ad blockers onto their browsers. So even if you do end up paying a social media company to show your advertisement, users can completely ignore it Many email marketing programs are either free or inexpensive.
Services like MailChimp allow you to easily create a list of people to send emails to regularly. However, even when people subscribe to you, remember that they don’t want to hear from you too much. This not only saves you time, but also allows you to only contact these people when you have something really important to say.
Discounts, advice, new features about your product or service, changes in items and services are all valuable information to them and can secure returns for you. And don’t forget, not everyone on your list needs to receive every email you send. Make sure to target your groups specific to their needs and interests.
Email marketing is a valuable tool if done and used correctly. While marketers work to overcome “ad blindness” on an ongoing basis, direct emails create dialogue.
You have the power to directly send what is most attractive to your client base and invite them to come back to your site, check out a sale or learn about the latest innovations. Make sure that your business isn’t missing out on these conversations!
Hannah Alkadi is a digital marketing intern at Catapult Creative Media. She studies advertising and visual communications at LSU, and spends her free time informing others about micronations.
Work with Catapult Creative Media Inc. Catapult Creative Media Inc. is a digital marketing and design agency serving south Louisiana and headquartered in Baton Rouge. Founded in 2007, Catapult provides digital, social and mobile marketing solutions backed by relevant strategy and measurable results. Catapult works the web to their clients’ advantage, launching them to their next level of success.
