5 ways email can help your business take flight

Haven’t you heard? Email’s not dead

There’s a rumor that’s been going around for some time now that email is dead. But even with the rise of social media, email is more alive than ever. The truth is, everyone has an email account, whereas social media usage can be more fragmented. According to a Mediabistro study, 94% of internet usage is dedicated to sending or checking email.

Very recently, we’ve also seen a boom of several email apps looking to revolutionize the inbox. Google’s Inbox App, Mailbox and Boomerang are just a few that are working to shape email to fit an on-the-go, multi-screen lifestyle.

It’s cheap, with a high ROI

Setting up an account is easy – with Mailjet, it takes 5 minutes to create an account and be on your way to sending. With a ROI of 4300%, being low on resources or strapped for time is no excuse! A good place to start is to set up a few transactional email campaigns. Welcome emails, which a customer receives after signing up to receive emails from you, and confirmation emails, after customer performs a purchase or action, are both crucial in the customer lifecycle. If you’re ready to dig a little deeper, segment your contact list by gender, geography or behavior and message them about your product accordingly.

Customers are ready to purchase when they open their inbox

With new email inventions like Google’s promotion’s tab, the inbox has become the shopper’s best friend. Consumers have been trained to open their Promotion’s tab to look for new product updates or promotions when they’re in the mindset to shop. The neat part is that transactional emails are still filtered to land in the Primary tab – so you don’t have to worry about password resets or tracking information being lost in the mix.

Depending on your business, if you decide you’d like all of your emails to land in the Primary tab, simply send an email campaign asking your customers to add you to their contact list. This tells Google that you’re a trusted sender that sends one-on-one messages to this recipient.

Retention, long-term

All this talk about email doesn’t mean we’re ruling out other marketing channels. Each one plays its own part in the customer lifecycle – email has its place and should be used along with social media for maximum impact. Social media channels are a great vehicle to drive brand awareness, whereas email is more of a channel for retention.

Use regular email newsletters to keep customers up-to-date on product news and drive them to engage further on your website and blog. You can also create a triggered reactivation campaign to send a promotion to inactive customers who have not opened or clicked an email in the past 3-6 months. According to ReturnPath, 45% of recipients of reactivation campaigns went on to read subsequent emails after receiving their first reactivation campaign.

Life span

Emails stay in the inbox until your customer is ready to take action. The lifespan of an email is longer than that of a social media post; the lifespan of a tweet is so short, you can predict its popularity within the first five minutes.

Emails are also impactful since they can be saved until a customer is ready to engage with your product. Whether it’s a discount, free trial or sweepstakes, customers will not only be able to easily read the message several times but also save it for when they’re most ready to engage.

Above all, since you’re reading this article, it looks like you’re already off to a good start! Let us know in the comments below how you plan to use email!