While many customers appreciate the intimacy and trustworthiness of direct mail, most businesses aren’t using it to reach their prospects and customers.
Read on to discover the benefits of choosing email marketing over direct mail for small businesses.
What are the benefits of choosing email marketing over direct mail?
Email provides many benefits that make it a thriving alternative to direct mail.
Email has a higher ROI
The biggest benefit to email marketing is that the ROI is more than 5x higher than direct mail. Direct mail tends to bring in about $7 for every dollar spent, while email marketing produces $38 for every dollar you invest.
ROI is an important consideration for small businesses who may not have the money to spend on large direct mail campaigns but have time to devote to creating email campaigns.
Email marketing delivers over 5x higher ROI than direct mail.
Source: Marketing Profs
Email requires minimal time and resources.
Automation and technology have made it easier and faster than ever to create beautiful and unique email campaigns.
For example, Campaign Monitor offers a drag-and-drop builder where you can design your own customized campaigns in minutes. You can also choose from plenty of premade templates, which you can also customize with branding and other changes.
Automation allows you to send email campaigns based on triggered events, such as viewing a product page or a subscriber’s birthday, so you’ll always reach your subscribers at exactly the right moment.
Consider the following example of a triggered campaign from Sephora:
Source: Campaign Monitor
It’s easier to contact your audience through email.
If you want to reach an audience through email, all you need is an email address. Plus, you can build a global audience with email.
Consumers may be more willing to hand over their email address because they can easily unsubscribe if they don’t like your content. On the other hand, it’s much more difficult to stop receiving marketing material through direct mail.
You can add widgets and pop-ups to your website and social media account to collect email addresses. Later, once you build a rapport, you can consider asking for a mailing address for other marketing materials, like catalogs.
Email offers more personalization options.
Direct mail doesn’t leave much room for personalized content—which 67% of customers expect. Plus, personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates, compared to generic content.
With email, however, you can provide personalized content based on buying history or browsing history. You can also segment your list based on gender, age, location, and countless other factors. Personalization allows you to provide the most relevant content possible at just the right moment.
How to measure your email marketing results
Log into your email service provider dashboard and click on the campaign you want to track. From your dashboard, you should be able to easily check the statistics from all of the campaigns you sent. You’ll want to consider the following metrics:
- Open rates
- Click-through rates
- How many subscribers are converting into customers
- How your customer loyalty evolves over time
With this information, you’ll be able to check whether or not your email marketing campaigns are engaging your subscribers. If your numbers are lackluster, switch up your subject lines and personalization tactics to improve open and click rates.
Does it really matter?
Yes, it’s important to understand the benefits of email marketing over direct mail. Businesses—especially small businesses—can’t afford to spend money on marketing efforts that won’t produce a return.
While email marketing has a lower open rate than direct mail, email also has a higher ROI because it requires fewer resources.
What now?
Now that you understand the benefits of email marketing versus direct mail, you can start building a subscriber list and creating your own personalized email campaigns.
Make sure to build a healthy subscriber list only through ethical means. Not only will this help you avoid lawsuits, but it will also ensure you’re only contacting people who truly want to hear from your brand.
Are you ready to start building a list full of engaged subscribers? Check out this Knowledge Base article for tips on building your list.