Yes! But it’s not easy. But the payoff can be huge…
A couple of stats:
Forrester found that customers who buy email advertised products spend 138% more than customers who don’t buy through email. That’s a huge difference. Why? I believe that if you’ve established a strong enough relationship of trust with a consumer to the point that they will not only open your email messages but click through and purchase then you’ve already created that most desirable of attributes in your relationship – commitment. And commitment drives credibility and credibility drives action which translates to sales.
Second, GfK Research Dynamics reports that 73% of email users have made an online purchase as the result of relevant email offers they’ve received. That’s online purchases. There is no doubt an additional percentage who’ve been driven to pick up the phone or visit the store to purchase merchandise originally presented to them via their email inbox.
Note the emphasis on relevant. Amazon is great at populating my inbox with highly relevant offers. I may not act immediately on their offers but I don’t discard them. I maintain most of them in a wish list type folder in my email inbox. What do I mean by relevant? Well if I buy a book on search engine optimization or search engine marketing, Amazon makes sure to notify me of additional relevant titles in this category. Look at the list above. Are the titles relevant? Yes. Am I likely to buy? Not only am I likely but I have on numerous occasions. Do you know what’s relevant to your online customers? Are you capitalizing on this information?
Yeah, there are lots of snakes and dragons in the world of email marketing. Email deliverability issues being foremost among them but the rewards for making ongoing investments in resolving and overcoming these issues can be well worth the additional effort.
