Marketing has evolved and is now more focused on reaching out to the maximum audience more cheaply and conveniently. Today with the advent of digital, there are many ways for a company to reach out to its customers.
In this article, our primary focus will be on permission-based email marketing. Since email has been around for a long time, it is one of the more tried and tested platforms to generate leads, convey messages, and build relationships.
Just as it sounds, permission-based email marketing is simply sending emails to the people who have opted to receive emails from your organization. To start with permission-based email marketing, you need to have a contact list to email.
The most critical step of email marketing is collecting emails from the people interested in your organization’s offerings. There are many ways you can create a contact list for your email marketing. One of the most common ways is having people sign up for your newsletter.
Some people think that requiring permission to send emails adds a barrier to the lead generation process. In reality, this lets your organization reach the relevant chunk of people who are interested in your offering.
Email marketing contact list
There are two types of permissions for email marketing.
Implied Permission
With this type of permission, a company starts sending out emails to people without explicitly asking them. For example, people who have filled in the contact form or provided their email while signing up on the company’s portal or app can receive emails.
Express Permission
For this type, a company explicitly asks people for their permission to send them emails. While collecting emails, the company mentions that providing email information will receive regular emails from the company.
The more your company’s contact list is made of people asked with express permission, the better the chances are of conversions and profit. One of the best ways to build a good contact list for your emails is by providing good quality content, valuable information, and knowledge for free. This way, people will be more likely to sign up for more exclusive and customized content.
One thing that you should keep in mind is that you do not buy an email list. Buying an email list is a waste of both your money and time. Since the people on this list haven’t permitted you to send emails, sending them emails will only deteriorate your brand’s reputation and trust. These people might not even be your relevant audience and might get frustrated with the regular emails. Sending unsolicited emails might also increase the chances of your emails getting flagged as spam.
Providing incentives is the main way to get people to sign up for your emails. Offering them a first-time user experience, special discounts, exclusive content, and other benefits will make them stay registered to your emails for a longer period.
Benefits of permission-based email marketing
Sending emails to genuinely interested people in your content and offerings leads to better numbers in ROI and conversions. When you send emails to people who have opted to receive them, the click-through and conversion rates rise. Sending customized content to the relevant audience can help increase your profits. It is also to be noted that 77% of the consumers prefer email-based marketing. Some of the benefits of email-based marketing are:
Higher Open Rates
Emails that a user has signed up to receive a higher open rate. A non-permission-based email has an open rate of around 2%, while a permission-based email is about 30% to 40%. If this alone doesn’t give you a reason to go for permission-based email marketing, we don’t know what will!
More Conversions
Click-through rates (CTR) of emails that are permission-based are also higher than those which aren’t. After getting a user to open your email, the next important step is to make sure that the user clicks the call to action in the email. According to the campaign monitor, the click-through rates of permission-based emails are 20% compared to non-permission-based emails, around 0.2%.
Builds Brand Trust and Reputation
Email marketing ensures brand recall. When you regularly send out emails to your customers, they stay updated and informed about your brand. However, sending regular updates to people who didn’t sign up for them can negatively impact your brand. With permission-based email marketing, it is easy to stay in touch and educate the customers who are already interested in your brand.
Better Sender Score
When you send emails to customers who haven’t been permitted to receive them, the CTR decreases and might lead to your emails ending up in spam. However, when you opt for permission-based email marketing, the sender score is guaranteed to increase with higher CTR, and emails end up in the intended inbox of the users instead of their spam.
Forwarding and pushing out emails to users who wish to read them would, of course, result in far more ROI and, eventually, more sales. It’s challenging to get people to read unrequested letters, let alone connect and shop.
A permission-based email has a 400% return on investment. You won’t get the same kind of return on investment from just about any advertising strategy. The overall effect of non-approved opens is less than five percent.
The conversion rate for permission-based email marketing is near 25%. It might not seem like a significant proportion. However, when you remember the sheer number of emails a customer receives per day and still chooses to view and receive your content, this is quite impressive.
Despite all this, make sure that your emails contain an unsubscribe or opt-out button. Even though a company would never want anyone to unsubscribe to their emails, it is essential to show that you care about what the customer wants. Make sure that each email that you send out has this button in the end to avoid any frustration among the people who are now not interested in your content and offerings.
Final Thoughts
After learning all these benefits and stats, not implementing permission-based email marketing would be bad for business. Even though it might take time to build the right contact list and require an additional step, the results that your company will reap out of it will be tremendous. Permission-based email marketing is truly the right way to email your customer base.
