E-mail marketing is a powerful tool that can help businesses of all sizes connect with consumers in a personal way to improve loyalty, increase revenues and drive more business. In recent industry surveys, close to 40 percent of marketing executives called e-mail marketing the most powerful advertising channel of their business and 63 percent said they would like to increase their spend on e-mail marketing in 2011. Furthermore, research done by the Direct Marketing Association in 2010 showed that e-mail marketing was expected to generate an ROI of over $42 for every dollar spent on it that year.
Are you convinced yet? Now let’s look at just a few of the many reasons why e-mail marketing is so effective:
- Current and potential customers opt-in to receive e-mails from your business. By voluntarily giving you their e-mail address, customers are electing to learn more about your business and its products or services.
- E-mail marketing lets you target customers with messages that relate to them. Use buying history, time in store or interests to send customers e-mails that directly relate to what interests them.
- It generates actionable data. Every e-mail campaign that you send to customers returns valuable information that helps you define what works and what doesn’t work so that you can constantly refine your approach and content.
A great example of a retailer that has embraced e-mail marketing and benefitted from it is Lighthouse Marine Distributors, a Radiant customer that sells boat engines and supplies in Long Island, New York. The company knew it needed a way to better engage their current and prospective customers in a meaningful way. After weighing all of their options from Facebook and Twitter to mobile applications, the company decided that e-mail marketing was the best option for its business. It decided to try Radiant’s new CustomerConnect e-mail marketing tool. After four short months, some of the successes Lighthouse Marine Distributors has seen are:
- Generating more than $35,000 in revenue through its “Welcome New Customers,” “We Miss You,” and “Free Shipping” campaigns
- Selling more than $20,000 worth of goods just from the “Welcome New Customers” campaign
- Building customer database to more than 6,600 members
Lighthouse Marine Distributors is just one of more than 1,000 retail stores using CustomerConnect, and together they’ve generated more than $8 million in revenue through the tool. This is because CustomerConnect integrates with a retailer’s CounterPoint system to leverage customer data directly from the point of sale, allowing them to connect with customers through targeted messaging.
Consumers want to receive information that is personal to them, and e-mail marketing is a great way for businesses to engage these consumers in a meaningful way. How is your business using e-mail marketing today? What types of campaigns do you find most effective? Share your stories here!
Tags: CounterPoint, counterpoint customer connect, counterpoint customerconnect, counterpoint point of sale, counterpoint pos, counterpoint retail pos, CRM, e-mail marketing, email marketing, email marketing for retailers, email marketing tools, Executive, nasdaq:RADS, radiant point of sale, radiant pos, rads, retail business, retail email marketing, retail industry, retail marketing, retail news, retail systems
I like your blog, it’s very interesting. Good job man.
I have doing marketing for some local restaurants in our area and I have to agree that Email marketing can do wonders. Real Trick is what are you sending in email – just your special or some useful information that your customer can use.