What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is one of the marketing methods that communicates through email and leads to attracting customers and acquiring conversions. Although the use of Social media as a customer contact point has risen in the business market, the usefulness of email as a communication tool is still undeniable. Especially in B2B companies, it is an effective method because communication is centered on email. Email marketing objectives are attracting customers, developing fans of products and brands, and purchasing services, and since email marketing is able to check the levels of interest of potential customers by checking the open rate of emails and the status of URL click through website, we are able to get results by approaching business negotiations at the right time.

There are various methods in email marketing such as delivering mail step by step according to the situation of purchasing motivation to follow the behavior of prospective customers in a step-by-step manner. “Segment mail” is another method of sorting customers based on attributes and behaviors and sending content with different contents for each segment. Attributes such as company industry, location, job title, and issue or goals they have, or behaviors such as webinar participation, exhibition visitors, document requests, and inquiries. “E-mail newsletter” that delivers the same content to all recipients at once. It will be distributed to everyone regardless of their attributes or actions, whether they have exchanged business cards once or are in the process of business negotiations, and will be distributed to many people such as “new product releases” and “large-scale event announcements”. Last example method of email marketing is an email sent to a customer who has not been contacted for a while, such as having a business talk 6 months ago but losing the relationship, or users downloading the product information pdf files on a website but not being able to contact for 3 months. The purpose is to remind the customers about your brand and to make them reconsider purchasing products.

What are the benefits of Email Marketing?

Able to start at a low cost

The cost of implementing email marketing is lower than compared to other online advertising measures. Since it does not have the printing cost or advertising cost, the only thing that will play a part is the manpower for creating the content, and costs for distribution systems and tools for checking the performance such as open rate, delivery rate.

Able to get new potential customers

In order to obtain new potential customers, we need to approach customers who have needs at that time. It will be a waste to wait until a demand arises just because there was no demand at the time of first contact. However, it is very inefficient to check the situation for each company by tele appointment on a regular basis. On the other hand, if it is an email, it can reach many companies and people at one time. Regardless of whether you have demand or not, by having regular contact with customers through email newsletters, etc., it will be easier to approach the timing when you want to notify about your products and services. Therefore, it is possible to get responses such as inquiries and purchases of products and services via email.

Able to keep existing customers

Customers who have purchased the product once are said to have lower purchasing consideration than customers who have not purchased the product before. Email marketing is a tool that allows companies and individuals to connect directly at a very low cost compared to direct visits, and telephones. Once the customers have made a purchase or use your service, you can build relationships by continuing to have contacts using email. Keep engaging with the existing customers by emailing products that are similar to their product purchase history to stimulate their purchasing motivation.

Able to change the content and delivery timing of emails according to the attributes and behaviour of the user

Another advantage of email marketing is that you can set the content of emails, the timing of delivery, the frequency of delivery, etc. according to the attributes of the user.
It is also a marketing method that is compatible with other platforms such as “send an email with coupon to the user who accessed the product page.” Links to corporate websites or social media accounts, service detail pages, etc. can be included in the email, so synergistic effects with other media can be expected.

Able to check the effectiveness

There is a limit to how a sales team can follow customers individually by phone. Therefore, it is important to segment and understand the level of purchase intent of the users.
In email marketing, we can obtain data that measures the purchase accuracy of customers based on the reaction to the delivered email. After delivering an email, we are able to verify the effect by checking the data. We can immediately check data such as email arrival rate, open rate, CTR (click rate), CVR (conversion rate), and unsubscribe rate. By running the PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) cycle based on this data, it is possible to efficiently improve the accuracy of measures.