Electronic Direct Mail, otherwise known as EDMs: chances are, you’re signed up to receive a heap of e-newsletters from companies on a daily or weekly basis. You know the ones were talking about - sometimes they might land in your inbox or even junk mail without you even remembering you signed up for them. Others, you hotly anticipate receiving every day, week or fortnight.

So many business owners these days are pouring copious amounts of energy into Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and elsewhere. Here’s our question:

Why aren’t these businesses putting just as much energy, if not more, into their Electronic Direct Mail strategy?

Here’s the thing, when you post to Facebook and Instagram or Tweet, you’re competing with an incredible amount of online noise across each channel. When you send Electronic Direct Mail to your subscriber, you’re communicating directly to people on your email list who you already have some kind of relationship with.

Trust us when we say that EDMs are an incredibly powerful tool when used correctly. We’ve guided clients through the entire process and eventually, we see them using Electronic Direct Mail to grow their business by keeping the lines of communication open with their client base by sending regular newsletters, showcasing their latest products and services and so on. The end result is increased sales and higher customer satisfaction levels.

Now that we’ve got your attention, our team has listed 3 of our top reasons why you should be using EDMs to entice your audience:

Email marketing is incredibly cost effective

We hear clients talking about how cost effective Facebook boosting can be (you can generally run a campaign for as little as AUD $5). We’re going to do one better here because in relation to email marketing, the only cost to you is the fee to use whatever email marketing platform you choose. If you do your homework, you’ll find that services such as MailChimp are free until you hit a certain number of subscribers. Generally speaking, marketing platforms base their pricing on the total number of subscribers on your email database.

It’s our #1 tactic for relationship building

The companies that benefit most from their EDMs have a well thought out email marketing strategy that talks to their customer in their own language and creates anticipation on the recipient’s part. If you’re sending a fortnightly or monthly newsletter, a handy tip is to send it on the same day each time so that your customer’s know when it’ll arrive in their inbox. Some other really handy benefits for marketers when it comes to EDMs is the way in which most popular platforms will allow you to sort your subscriber list. Here’s a brief rundown of a couple of the more popular sorting methods:

Automation - this sees you creating customer journeys so that you can engage with your customers on a more personal level. You define the triggers and the software sends the relevant campaigns to your subscribers. For instance, if a customer is celebrating a birthday, automation allows you to send them a special birthday email. Of course, personalisation leads to higher open rates and helps to maximise sales.

Custom fields - storing your contacts’ custom data is incredibly useful information for your company to have up your sleeve. We’re talking about things such as location, interests, gender and so on. This allows you to make your campaigns more relevant to your customers.

Email marketing helps you to learn about your audience

The software you use provides powerful inbuilt analytics that enables you to track how your campaigns are performing. From here, you can gauge what kind of content your customers are responding to and what content is missing the mark. Email marketing platforms provide the following tools to help you track audience engagement:

  • Opens and clicks
  • Sharing
  • Google analytics
  • Email bounce rates

We’ve only scratched the surface as to how Electronic Direct Mail can benefit your business. Planning and implementing a strong EDM marketing campaign is crucial for business in today’s day and age. Not only does it allow you direct entry into your customers’ inboxes where you’ll communicate directly with your target market, it’s incredibly cost-effective. The low cost of the operation also makes it a lucrative proposition for most businesses.

If you’d like to chat more about your EDM strategy, contact our friendly team today and we’ll be in touch as soon as we can.