A panel of email marketing professionals were interviewed recently who work closely with SMEs. A key question was asked: why should an SME put scarce resources into email when times are tough? Here’s some answers that emerged…

Easy low-cost entry

Email marketing is something businesses have done without breaking the bank, starting off with a simple approach and ‘testing the waters’ before committing more resources to it. The cost of sending email through an email marketing service, like Mobilizemail, is very low these days.

Great ROI – if it’s done right…

It’s been well established that email marketing – done appropriately – brings in the money. Its ROI performance gets a lot of good PR, even though it may decrease in times of recession, it has still ‘blown all other direct response methods out of the water’. But… poor results have been experienced by businesses who don’t know how best to use email marketing to further their business success. ROI doesn’t even count the value of email as a long-term relationship builder…

Valuable potential business grown from existing customers

Many small businesses rely on the personal touch and great customer service to build relationships and sustain business… commonly a differentiator over bigger companies. Regular contact with customers and clients through email newsletters and campaigns has effectively enabled this.

It has been well established that the cost of finding new customers is up to five times higher than up-selling or cross-selling to existing customers. Email marketing has been found to be a solid business marketing tactic for this as it is extremely low-cost to market to contacts already in a business database. Email marketing trends emerging in 2009 show a focus on improving relationships with current customers to build sales.

Quickly measurable results enable adjustment for improvement

There’s an old saying in marketing – “I know I wasted half my advertising budget, I just don’t know which half.” With the measurability of email marketing, businesses don’t have to live with this hit-and-miss syndrome any more. Depressed economies have encouraged more careful use of scarce dollars so businesses can zero-in on why their advertising worked (or didn’t) faster. As businesses learn more about their audience, they can adjust their marketing pitch accordingly to increase sales.

Getting ahead in recession

Recession has been shown to be a great opportunity for smart businesses who know how to capitalise on the situation to do really well and out-do those who are retreating…