In the day and age of the proliferation of marketing, communication and media tools, many marketing experts still swear by email marketing.

If you’re wondering just how effective is the most cost-effective marketing channel with the highest conversion rate, consider these numbers. According to MailChimp, travel email marketing has a 20.69% open rate!

In the following paragraphs, you will find advice on how to use email marketing to grow, reach, and engage your target audiences.

Reasons companies use email marketing

Most cost-effective marketing channel

Regardless of the business size, email marketing provides an attractive return on investment. An eMarketer study revealed that the median email marketing ROI is 122% – four times higher than any other digital marketing channel.

Without any print costs, postage fees or advertising rates, email marketing is the most cost-effective marketing out there. Direct Marketing Association calculated that email marketing brings in $40 for every $1 spent, leaving behind search, display, and social marketing.

Trackable metrics

Have you heard the quote ‘let the numbers do the talking’? One of the greatest benefits of email marketing are the various tangible ways you can measure results – depending on what your goals are.

Is your goal to increase engagement? To accurately measure the rate of interaction with customers, the metric to look at is the open rate, click rate, the number of unsubscribers, and conversions.

Another way to measure how well your email campaign is performing is measuring how long it takes your email leads to move from learning about your product to the consideration phase – and from there to the decision stage.

Finally, many businesses try email marketing because they hope it can directly increase their revenue. And while consumers rarely make a purchase based on one email, a little bit of incentive in the form of a discount or coupon might go a long way.

Efficient lead nurturing

It is often the case that a consumer visits your website a few times but has not yet decided to make a purchase. Either they need more information, more time to consider other options, or just need a little motivation to make a purchase.

By sending an occasional email, you can keep in touch with the consumers that have already shown interest in your brand and continually provide them with the information and encouragement they need to make a purchasing decision.

With each email sent, consumers become more aware of your business and your brand. Keep sending useful content and not spam, and watch your lead move closer and closer to the bottom of the funnel.

It’s all about the right content…

So you just read that the right way to retain your email subscribers and get new ones in by regularly sending useful content and not spam. But how can you define what is useful? I mean, you can’t possibly know what your customers like or don’t like… isn’t that right?

It definitely is not! Keep reading as we uncover the secret to sending the right content to the right subscriber – list segmentation.

… sent to the right subscriber

List segmentation is actually separating your email subscribers list into various groups depending on one or more factors such as gender, location or email reading behavior with the goal of targeting them more precisely. It is possible to segment users according to any type of data that you can collect about them.

For example, you can segment users by their level of engagement with your newsletters and give special incentive to those who have been inactive for a while. Similarly, you can segment users located in your country to send your outbound travel deals, and shoot out inbound offers to foreigners.

There are many list segmenting options to play around with – try multiple options to find out what works best.

Don’t forget previous customers

There’s no customer like a returning customer. In the previous blog post, we revealed that selling to a returning customer is 5 times cheaper than selling to a first-time buyer but let’s place that theory in the context of newsletter segments.

A travel agency has a lot of data about each of their customers. From basic data like the customer’s birthday to more complex data like travel preferences, your previous customers’ data is a goldmine for repeat business.

Integrate your newsletter software with your travel agency software

Email marketing is supposed to make your business more efficient and not create complications for you, which is why users of Lemax have the possibility to integrate their newsletter software with their travel software.

If one of Lemax’s clients is using MailChimp service for creating and sending newsletters, it is possible to integrate MailChimp list with customers created in Lemax system. Therefore, every customer entered in Lemax will automatically be transferred to the selected MailChimp list, so you never have to worry about keeping your lists up-to-date.

Synchronization is done for all newly entered customers and customers that have had an update in data since the last synchronization. For example, if you change your customer’s name and surname in Lemax, it will be updated in MailChimp, too.

In short:

The bottom line here is that you can sell just about anything – as long as you’re targeting the right offer to the right audience. Focus on gathering as much data to create accurate and specific audience segments.

With strategic planning, targeted content and list segmentation, your business will consistently build value. In doing so, you will remain top-of-mind with your audience so when a customer needs products or services, your brand will stand a much better chance of turning leads into clients and clients into loyal customers.