E-mail marketing as a key instrument for gaining and retaining customers

Two key benefits of e-marketing

According to Jim Sterne e-mail marketing has two great benefits in the domain of cross-channel marketing. The first is measurability. E-mail marketing tools give insight in the type of actions recipients make, for example whether e-mails were opened or not or the number, whether the e-mails were forwarded, or resulted in a click-through to a particular landing page. The key strength is that every action or type of behavior is measurable.

The second major benefit of e-mail marketing, he argues, is testability. In his view e-mail becomes the major testing ground to test ideas and messages broadcasted to various different segments. By sending different messages to different audiences and then measuring the responses one learns which messages are more appealing and effective. The measured responses can then used as a basis of decision-making what messages to deliver to which audiences. E-mail marketing thus can help to make informed decisions which channels to allocate marketing budgets.

New business and customer retention

What is the value of a single e-mail address? What is the value of someone to opt-in? According to Jim Sterne e -mail marketing is not about generating traffic to a particular landing page. It should focus on answering the question what happens after target audiences visited the landing page: do they become loyal customers? In his view e-mail marketing should play a role in increasing customer loyalty and thus in growing Customer Lifetime Value. Key objective is to get valuable customers opting in your e-mail marketing campaigns. Testing and measurement are two key benefits that enable companies to get insight in how to allocate marketing budgets.

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