Is Email Marketing Still the King of Lead Generation?
Email Marketing has long been hailed as one of, if not the best lead generator for small businesses. It is quick, affordable and can generate leads instantly. However, over recent years the emergence of the digital age and new and exciting technologies have led to marketers and businesses experimenting with different forms of marketing.
So this begs the question, Is email marketing still the king of lead generation? Or is it fading off into the distance and succumbing to new and exciting forms of marketing?
The Facts
86% of business professionals prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes.
Click through rates are 47% higher for B2B email campaigns than B2C email campaigns.
59% of B2B marketers say email is their most effective channel in terms of revenue generation.
While 26% of SMBs polled use email marketing for sales, just 7% use email as a brand-building tool.
Welcome emails are incredibly effective: on average, 320% more revenue is attributed to them on a per email basis than other promotional emails.
80% of retail professionals indicate that email marketing is their greatest driver of customer retention (the next closest channel? Social media, identified by just 44% of those same professionals).
The stats above suggest that email marketing is still alive and kicking with thousands of businesses still utilising its powerful and effective lead generation capabilities.
However, most marketing experts agreed on 1 thing – social media has a much higher engagement rate when compared to email, but a much lower conversion rate.
Marketers are also branching out into other forms of marketing, with content marketing becoming a huge asset in recent times. Small Business owners are now dedicating a third of their marketing budgets to content marketing with video becoming the most popular and most effective piece of content to be produced. Prospects are more likely to comment, share, like and watch videos when compared to other pieces of content.
Blogging has also become extremely popular in the modern day, helping to attract visitors to your website, reinforce your brand, cement your position as the expert and generate new enquiries.
However, all of these forms of marketing have one thing in common. They can all be used alongside and in conjunction with email marketing.
If you create content such as blogs or videos you can email them out to your prospects and customers and link them back to your website and social media. This will help you enhance your reputation, gain new likes, followers, engagements and enquiries, whilst building trust with customers and prospects alike.
No business should rely on one form of marketing to be the sole lead generator. The key is cross channel marketing. Utilise multiple forms of marketing and converge them all together to create a fluid and strong brand presence that is guaranteed to enhance your reputation and generate new business.
The Verdict
Email Marketing is still an effective and efficient lead generator that should be utilised by you and your business. However, you should not rely on it to be the sole lead generator for your business, try new forms of marketing such as; social media, content marketing, Web ads and influencer marketing to drive the growth of your business and open up more opportunities than you could ever have imagined.
Create a strong brand and add continuity to your marketing efforts and you will reap the rewards.
For more information on the above or a quote for email and content marketing services contact us now on 01934 643961 or email info@equinoxmarketing.co.uk