I came across some really cool data for software companies trying to market their products with email campaigns. According to this Silverpop study on email marketing, “‘Computer Software’ was the only industry that ranked among the top three verticals for open rate, click-through rate and clicks per clicker.”
Which brings me to this Ecommerce Eye Candy called The State of Email Marketing from Constant Contact. As we said in our Email Marketing Update, its important to know how and when the recipients of your email campaigns view their email. Since permission based email marketing remains one of our favorite media for delivering more products to more customers, I thought it worthwhile to highlight certain benefits of your email marketing program.
This infographic lists five reasons that companies use email marketing:
- It’s greener – In What Are the Benefits of Going Green for a Business? Chron.com claims that, “As environmental consciousness grows, consumers are demanding more green products and services.” So use your email campaigns as a way of highlighting your company’s sense of responsibility.
- It’s more measurable – Smart companies are in the habit of establishing and monitoring criteria for success. Testing and improving specific, measurable goals is the first step in understanding your path to success.
- Consumers prefer it – Why not survey your various email lists to find out if, in fact, they prefer email communication to other channels? Based on their responses, you can make sure that you are providing your audience what they want.
- It gets better response rates – Here is a telling statistic from Constant Contact: Direct mail campaigns result in a 1-2% response rate while email marketing campaigns result in a 20-30% open rate. Is this true for your campaigns? Run a test to find out. Remember to measure your open rates against other metrics such as clickthrough rates and conversion actions.
- Its the first and most frequent thing people check – According to this data and my own personal experience, email is the first thing we check when we go online. A large part of your customers invariably check email several times a day. Make sure that the emails you send them are not just interesting, but useful.
Leave us a comment. We would love to know how valuable email marketing is to your business and what kind of response rates you in the software world are seeing.
