An email marketing system that offers list segmentation, good analytics, and cross channel marketing integration, is essential for almost every business today.
It really doesn't matter if you're offering your own product online, if you're an offline merchant with an online presence, or if you're selling your services to offline merchants. If you're not taking advantage of all available marketing channels by using an email marketing system, you're leaving money on the table.
One of the most important marketing channels today is that of email. Although some in the industry may be declaring email to be old-fashioned, it provides a much higher ROI for most small businesses than does many other online marketing channels.
For most merchants, list segmentation is a profitable step that they simply haven't considered yet. Analytics and cross channel integration are essential to successful marketing efforts, as well. Here is why:
List Segmentation in Your Email Marketing System
List segmentation is important in any email marketing system for several different reasons. It is especially important if your list includes both active consumers and leads you have yet to convert into buyers.
Buyers, having already bought from you, are more likely to buy again (as long as they are satisfied with their purchases). You can pitch sales to them a little more often than your yet-to-be-converted leads - these you must gently coax along your sales funnel.
Email Marketing System and Analytics of Your Email Subscriber List
There are other reasons to set up your email marketing system to track different segments of the same email subscriber list - especially if you are using your email marketing system to complement an offline business. You may want to keep track of subscribers you gained from Facebook and see how their activity differs from those who signed up for your list at a business location.
If you have the proper information, you may also want to keep track of subscribers from different zip codes (for example). You can also learn a lot about the most profitable ways to get customers if you track customers from different sources (Facebook, your blog, advertisements, online, etc.) and see how their buying behavior differs.
Cross Channel Marketing Integration with Your Email Marketing System
A good email marketing system is just one element of a good cross channel marketing strategy. When you take into account the state of the economy and the multiple media avenues available to your competition, you'll see that everybody needs to take part in multi channel marketing in the 21st century.
Unfortunately, most merchants and marketers still aren't integrating their cross channel marketing efforts into a greater whole. They still use one system of analytics for their blogs and websites, another for Facebook, another for other social media marketing, and yet another (and often several) for various mobile marketing efforts, etc.
This doesn't just tax the human mind and willpower; this fragmentation also makes it difficult for even the most intelligent of us to easily see patterns and make associations about our marketing. In short, it keeps us from seeing where we might be making even more money!
A good email marketing system will easily integrate with your other efforts. This is especially necessary in 2012, when you will likely be pulling in subscribers from more channels than ever.
An Email Marketing System with All The Essentials
With modern businesses needing to keep up with so many different marketing avenues, an email marketing system with all three of these essentials can streamline marketing and make the process much simpler. Unless you can integrate your marketing systems and use your email marketing system to more effectively reach out to potential customers through email, you will spend too much time simply trying to analyze your marketing efforts and too little time leveraging those that work best for your business.
Don't miss out, secure your own Digital Command Center. Click here to sign-up to be notified upon our public beta launch this Spring. Our Professional Membership starts at only $29 /mo and early adopters will receive a 60 Day Free Trial. You can't afford to wait, your competition may have already signed up!