Email is consistently rated as the most popular and most used application
on the internet. Indeed, some people only use email and do not browse
the internet at all!
Email is the preferred primary means of business communication (ahead
of telephone and postal mail).
42% of business users check their business email while on holiday.
53% of business users check their email six or more times during the
working day.
34% of internet users check their email continuously throughout the
day.
96% of internet users' main reason for being online is email.
There are over 450 million email boxes worldwide, with the number rapidly
increasing.
2. Save Time and Money
No printing, no postage, no mail house charges.
Traditional direct mail costs between £1 and £3 per recipient and can
take over a month to complete. With email, the cost can be reduced to
pennies per recipient and completed in hours.
It takes far less time to create and send an email compared to a traditional
direct mail campaign.
Overall, the return on investment of opt-in email is 40 times greater
than direct mail.
3. Increased Sales
It's not unusual for email campaigns to get 5%-15% response rates.
The response rate of opt-in email is 50 times greater than banner ads
and 5 times greater than direct mail.
4. Instant Results
Minutes after sending out your email campaign you can start seeing
responses and orders. And you can time your campaigns to arrive on the
best day of the week or month for maximum response.
Instead of waiting weeks for responses and test results, you'll have
them in hours.
80% of responses to an email campaign will occur within 3 days (traditional
direct mail takes weeks).
5. Measurable Results
Email campaigns are fully trackable, with up to the minute statistics.
You can easily test which message generates the best response and alter
your campaign accordingly.
6. Quick To Create
You could knock out an email in an hour or two as opposed to weeks
in the "offline" world.
In addition, you can even make money from your newsletter itself by
selling ad space or by using a paid subscription model. See "Making
Money From Your Newsletter" later.
7. Personalisation and Targeting
Email allows your message to be personalised. Instead of "Dear
Customer" you can address the recipient as "Dear Rachel"
and send offers targeted to their preferences.
Next section: Is
email marketing for you?