BENEFITS OF EMAIL MARKETING Why does email marketing present such a benefit over other more traditional forms of marketing? Why does it drive better returns on investment and customer engagement metrics than other marketing techniques? Why would you invest the time and resources to develop an email marketing program at all? Email marketing is utilized by thousands of businesses of all sizes across the globe. Those who are unfamiliar with this method of advertising may not immediately understand why it is so popular amongst companies in a variety of industries - but there are many reasons why email marketing is seen by many as vital marketing tool. In this article, MailBrainiers presents you the top email marketing benefits to your business compared to other forms of marketing, including:

1. Benefits of Email Marketing
Why does email marketing present such a benefit over
other more traditional forms of marketing? Why does it
drive better returns on investment and customer
engagement metrics than other marketing techniques?
Why would you invest the time and resources to develop
an email marketing program at all?
Email marketing is utilized by thousands of businesses of
all sizes across the globe. Those who are unfamiliar with
this method of advertising may not immediately
understand why it is so popular amongst companies in a
variety of industries - but there are many reasons why
email marketing is seen by many as vital marketing tool.
In this article, MailBrainiers presents you the top email
marketing benefits to your business compared to other
forms of marketing, including:
1. Return on investment
In the business world, results are arguably all that
matters. With this in mind, the main reason that most
businesses invest in email marketing is the fantastic
return on investment. In 2011, the Direct Marketing

2. Association estimated that email marketing typically
returns £40 for every £1 invested. A number of sources
have suggested that this is better than any other
platform.
2. Reduced Time & Effort
Take a moment to think about the time and effort
involved in structuring a direct-to-consumer or direct
business-to-business campaign using one of the two
most common offline direct marketing communications
techniques:
 Print Postal Mailings: You'll need to allow time for a
designer to create the mailing, typically through
several lengthy revisions. Then you'll need to allow
time for the print mailing to be printed, cut and, if
necessary, stuffed into envelopes. There will be
time while the marketing collateral is being
transported via the postal system and then time
while you wait for the consumer to retrieve it from
the mail box.
 Telesales Campaigns: In addition to having to
construct a telesales script, you'll have to wait the
time out while your sales agents dial through cycled
call attempts to all of the sales leads or customers
on your target list.

3. With email marketing, however, you can turn a
marketing communications piece out in typically less
than two hours. Using recurring email templates, all
you'll need to do is to approve the copy for the email and
any changes to graphics, use easy database list queries
like those available in the MailBrainiers system to decide
whom to send to, and then just hit send. Weeks' of work
can be accomplished in just a few hours and by a single
employee.
3. Immediacy
Due to the immediacy of email, a business can start
seeing results within minutes of its emails being sent. A
24-hour sale is a brilliant marketing ploy that can be
utilised by email, as it creates a sense of urgency and
convinces subscribers to take immediate action.
Businesses typically have to wait weeks until they see
sales come in as a result of print or broadcast campaigns
and, even then, how can they be sure what was
responsible for the purchase?
4. Real-Time Messages
As we talked about above, with a print mailer or telesales
campaign, you'll need to select marketing campaigns and

4. specials that have a "long tail" because of the extended
period of time between campaign development and
implementation. Because a marketing email can be
completed in just a few hours, you can literally send
"day-of" messages to help reduce stock or promote a
limited time special as needed. You can even send
unique real-time messages to customers that arrive on
their birthdays or anniversaries. With email marketing,
short time frames are your friend, not your enemy.
5. Global
What other marketing platform lets you instantly send a
message to thousands of people across the world? Sure,
social media can help you spread the word amongst a
global audience - but there's no telling who's actually
reading your content.
6. Personalize Messages
Because print mail campaigns, telesales campaigns and
even print, television and radio advertising campaigns
must be done in a mostly "one-size-fits-all" format, it's
difficult for you to speak directly to your consumer in a
personalized way. However, email marketing presents
many dynamic opportunities. Not only can you
send personalized email with your user's name or login

5. name, but many email marketing solutions offer the
ability to feed in personalized information such as sales
or purchase history. Also, because creating separate
email sends is significantly less challenging than creating
separate postal mail, print mail or advertising campaigns,
you can segment your customer list into smaller lists and
send very personalized messages. For example, you can
select all of your users or customers who are from New
York City and then write your email marketing copy to
speak directly about New York City. With email
marketing and communications, you can easily speak to
your customers in a very personalized and intimate way
that is not possible with other marketing channels and
avenues.
7. Segment User and Customer Database Information
As noted above, because you can segment your database
of customers or users with email, you can send extremely
targeted marketing campaigns that will result in
increased sales conversions simply because they are so
specific. For example, if you sell flowers, you can find
everybody in your database who ever bought daffodils
and then send them an email in April when the first
daffodil shipments come in. You're then using your
customer database to put the most relevant message in

6. front of the customers who are most likely to respond to
it, and that's what good marketing is all about.
8. More Frequent Communications
Because email takes less time to create and send than
other marketing and advertising channels do, you can
communicate with your customers more frequently.
Instead of only being able to send them a flyer or catalog
once a month or once a quarter, you can easily send
them offers once a week. You could, of course, send
them email even more frequently than that if their email
activity supports making that decision. You may want to
note, however, that it's one of the typical email
marketing best practices to not send customer emails
more than once a week. However, gone are the days
when you were lucky to get a message in front of your
customers once a month. Via email marketing, you can
communicate with customers weekly or even daily!
9. Easy to create
Email marketing doesn't necessarily require a huge team
or reams of technical nous in order to be successful. It's
certainly possible to jazz up an email campaign with
fancy templates, videos, images and logos. Yet, some of
the most successful campaigns utilize simple plain text

7. emails, suggesting that it's the content of an email that is
the most important thing.
10. Test Marketing Messages
Good marketing always means being able to test
things! With email marketing, it becomes incredibly easy
to see what graphics, headlines, offers and even colors
your users and customers will respond to. It's incredibly
simple to simply send one version of an email to one part
of your list and a second version of an email to a
different part of your email list. Then, through the very
precise tracking tools that email marketing offers, you
can figure out which marketing message worked better
to convert sales or user actions. We'll talk in detail about
both the great tracking tools that email marketing offers
as well as common types of email testing later on in this
book.
11. Calls to action
Email marketing is great for taking advantage of impulse
buying. There aren't many other marketing platforms
which allow customers to go from witnessing an offer to
purchasing an item within two clicks of a button. With a
tempting call to action and a link straight to the

8. checkout, email newsletters can drive sales like no other
channel.
12. Information Spreading
When was the last time that you saw a customer hand
over a postal mailing that they'd received to a friend who
might be interested? Or have you have seen somebody
clip an ad from a magazine and send it to a family
member who may want that product or service?
However, forwarding an email with an enticing or useful
offer or piece of information only takes seconds and
many users will do it. That means that your marketing
effort has not only a wider reach but also a networked
reach with people who, by forwarding the email, are now
acting as your brand advocates.
Subscribers can forward brilliant deals and offers to their
friends at the click of a button. There aren't many other
types of marketing that can be shared as easily as this.
Before you know it, subscribers could become brand
evangelists; focused on introducing your business to a
new market.
13. Segmentation
Most marketing professionals would happily pay to
ensure they were only spending money targeting those

9. who were interested in their brand. Email marketers can
go one step further though, by only sending emails to
subscribers who meet certain criteria.
If a franchise only has an offer on in certain areas of the
country, it can easily arranged for emails to be sent only
to those living in certain areas. If there is a sale on sports
goods, it can be arranged for only those who have shown
an interest in sports to receive an email.
Email list segmentation works fantastically for brands
who gain information about their subscribers. Studies
have shown that marketers who use this tactic often
boast improved engagement rates as a result.
14. Reduce Overhead Costs
One of the most obvious benefits of email marketing is
its lower cost compared to mainstream marketing
channels. There are no print or postage costs and no fees
paid in exchange for exposure on a certain billboard,
magazine or television channel. Email marketers might
consider investing in specialist software to automate,
track and evaluate their emails. Granted, there may be a
small overhead for sending thousands of emails at a

10. time, but these costs are far lower than what you would
expect to pay using other marketing channels. You don't
need a ton of employees, designers, or marketing
analysts. You don't need to pay for printing, postal
mailing costs, phone lines, or advertising rates. In fact,
there are services, such as MailBrainiers Email Marketing,
that allow you to host your email marketing using
professionally-designed templates that you can then just
alter to your own needs. An effective email marketing
program only needs a great email marketing platform or
service and a good marketer who knows how to put the
right offers and the right copy and graphics in front of
the right portion of your user or customer list. There is
no marketing channel in which you'll spend less to get
greater returns on your investment than email
marketing.
15. Target fans of your brand The Simplified Guide to
Email Strategy
Email marketing is one of the only channels that
consumers ask to receive. The majority of businesses
utilizing the platform only send messages to those who
have signed up to receive them. This can allow for much

11. higher conversion rates as a business is only targeting
those who already have an interest in their brand. It is, of
course, possible to send unsolicited email marketing
messages, but this is only likely to annoy consumers and
result in a damaged brand image.
16. Exponentially Better Ability to Track Sales and User
Engagement
There may be no better marketing channel from which to
draw precise and usable tracking information to help you
figure out what's successful and what's not than email
marketing. Well-developed email marketing platforms
such as MailBrainiers Email Marketing can provide
tracking information on how many people opened an
email, how many people clicked a link in an email, which
specific link within the email was clicked, how many
people complained that an email was spam or
unsubscribed and, of course, whether your email even
made it into your recipient's inbox. Combine that with a
business's ability to track sales back to a source and you
can identity customer engagement and response through
an entire cycle with clear, easy-to-understand metrics,
making it simple to spot how a campaign can be
improved. These changes can be made almost

12. immediately too, whereas print or broadcast advertising
requires quite a bit of effort to alter.
17. Save the Planet with Email Marketing!
It may seem like a minor part of the big picture, but
we're all trying to be more environmentally friendly
these days! When you optimize email marketing as your
primary customer communication and direct-to-
consumer or direct business-to-business marketing
method, you'll help save the planet by reducing the
number of trees killed for print marketing pieces. We all
want to help save the planet, and making a responsible
decision about your marketing tools can help you to do
just that while also improving your business's success.
Those are a lot of measurable benefits of email
marketing over other marketing channels! Of course, we
recommend that email marketing be an important part
of your marketing mix – not the only ingredient in it.
However, as you can see, if you're not incorporating
email into your marketing plan, then you're missing out
on a number of benefits that can improve your overall
sales and user engagement for a very low overhead cost
and, in many cases, a very limited amount of time and
effort. When you take into account, the points made

13. above, it's easy to see why. Perhaps it's time for your
business to start taking this marketing platform more
seriously...