A Comprehensive Guide on Leveraging Email Marketing for SEO

Is email marketing dead? This is a question virtually every online marketer is asking as the search for the ultimate search engine optimization (SEO) toolkit continues. The place of search engines in the Internet marketplace cannot be gainsaid, and it is for this reason that marketers are continuously searching for new ways to increase their brands’ presence on search. With the increasing prominence of social media marketing and mobile marketing in Internet marketing, the place of email marketing seems to be threatened. However, research shows that email marketing for SEO is alive and well, and if numbers are anything to go by, this should in fact be an integral tool in your online marketing campaign.

 

The Power of Email Marketing in Numbers

In a statistics compilation published by HubSpot in 2016, email marketing rates highly among marketers is the best digital marketing technique. In one study, 86% of consumers said they like receiving promotional emails from companies they do business with at least once a month. Another study published by Campaign Monitor says email marketing is used by 82% of B2B and B2C companies.

The same study shows that companies leveraging email automation enjoy 70.5% higher open rates than those that don’t. According to McKinsey, email is 40X more effective at getting new customers than Facebook or Twitter. A similar study by eMarketer says that 81% of online shoppers who receive targeted emails based on previous shopping habits were more likely to make a purchase.

A QuickSprout survey on the other hand shows email subscribers are 3 times more likely to share content on social media than visitors from other platforms. There are many other studies which support the use of email in business marketing, and this makes it one of the best tools to use in your marketing campaigns.

 

Why Invest in Email Marketing for SEO?

Whatever the type of business you are promoting online, you now have a powerful marketing technique which provides a plethora of benefits for your business and an enviable return on investment (ROI). The talk of email marketing being dead should never arise if you know how to harness the power of email marketing.

Among the many benefits of email marketing are:

1) Targeted Marketing

One of the major reasons why email marketing boasts high conversion rates and a better ROI than other digital marketing techniques is the fact that you are targeting a specific market segment. With digital analytics tools, you can now identify your target market based on location, shopping power, lead status, demographics, or any other data. This means your target audience receives email content that is specifically suited for their consumption. You can customize your message for each customer to boost the chances of conversion.

2) Boosting Brand Awareness

When you have well prepared email content, it becomes very easy to increase your brand’s presence to a large number of potential customers. Every email has the power to convert and this is where smart designing, strategic planning and creation of targeted content by a highly experienced SEO company will come in handy. By creating captivating email content, you will easily stay on top of your target customers’ minds, which increases brand awareness.

3) Sharable Content

Most entertaining branded content you see on social media originates from email. It is very easy to share email content by simply clicking the forward button. The best thing about this sharing is the fact that is it done among people who share qualities of your targeted customer. This in turn increases the chances of conversion, which is among the topmost dreams of every online marketer. Your email subscribers in this case will act as brand ambassadors leading to brand exposure and credibility.

4) Measuring and Evaluation

One of the core strategies in any form of marketing today is the ability to measure the effectiveness of the technique being used. With email, measuring and evaluation of the campaign is easy with precise and valuable metrics including click-through-rates, delivery rates, open rates, and subscriber retention rates, among others. Emails can be used as a powerful tool to monitor the best type of content to use for the next marketing campaign. You will get invaluable insight on your customers and the data collected can even be applied to other marketing strategies.

There are many other benefits of email marketing including being environmentally friendly by saving on paper, affordability, ease of planning and implementation,–especially with automation– interactive nature of email, and personalized content, among other benefits.

 

Optimizing Your Email Marketing Campaign

With all these ideas in mind, you are now ready to start your email campaign. To get the best out of your emails, make sure you use analytical tools to understand your target customers, personalize the messages by addressing them by name, optimize and retest, make it easy to subscribe, use the best call-to-action (CTA), use an initial welcome message, make your content easy to read and create a publishing calendar.

Email marketing is not dead and in fact, it is one of the most versatile marketing tools you can use today. Your brand will enjoy higher conversion rates, more brand awareness, and strong customer relations.