By Bob West
Anyone with an email address knows that email marketing is more popular than ever, and that includes the specialty agriculture and horticulture markets served by Meister Media. We saw 30% growth in the number of clients renting email addresses from us in 2015, and before you dismiss the potential value of including direct email marketing in your 2016 efforts, take note of what made these company’s efforts so effective:
- Marketers are using increased frequency to boost acceptance of email marketing by growers and retailers. Sending more edirects gives marketers the chance to learn exactly what information interests and engages them (more on this below), which results in more effective future efforts. As these prospective customers become used to seeing a company’s name in their in box and know they can trust the marketer to provide valuable information, they become more likely to open the email and click on links in it.
- Marketers are increasingly focused with their direct mail efforts. The average number of individuals receiving each edirect we sent for a client dropped for the third consecutive year in 2015. Marketers rented an average of 3,618 email from us for each send, which is 16% fewer names than they rented the previous year. Marketers target their send based on a range of demographic information, especially the audience’s geography, crops they produce or services they offer in order to maximize the likelihood of engaging each individual recipient.
- Marketers are using educational / informational content to make sure the email results in click-through visits to their own websites. Given the increase in the number of emails everyone receives these days, assuming that these emails get ignored makes sense. But our data shows how that’s not the case. In fact, our clients’ 2015 edirects produced a significantly higher click-through rate compared to 2014 (2.31% vs. 1.74% in 2014) as more of them incorporated the educational content that our audiences constantly seek as they look to improve their own businesses. As a result, the average edirect we sent for a client in 2015 produced more clicks than did the average 2014 edirect, despite the fact that the 2015 sends went to such smaller lists.
Direct marketing may not make sense for every marketing campaign, but the results of our work for so many companies in this marketplace demonstrates that email marketing is only likely to increase in the future. This blog include other posts to help you succeed with email marketing, including:
- The simple process we use to help companies send their own email marketing efforts — click here;
- Research on the best subject line length to maximize open rates — click here; and
- Design recommendations to create an email blast that works — click here.
Bob West is Meister Media’s director of interactive sales, and he reviews the metrics on every client email effort that the company executes for a client. Contact him at 440/602-9129 or [email protected] to discuss your email marketing efforts.