It’s not a question of whether or not email marketing has evolved over the years, but a question of how far it has come. In the age of digital marketing, there are countless ways to connect with your clientele. With the amount of spamming and scamming going on via email, you may wonder if it’s worth the time or the effort to do email marketing for consultants at all. Should you get an email marketing campaign up and running for your consulting firm?
To put it simply, yes: email marketing is an essential piece of consultant marketing.
Although plenty of people have tried to ruin its credibility over the years, I challenge you to find a single person who doesn’t check their email daily, or at least a single person who simply doesn’t have an email account. Once you realize that email touches the lives of everyone in the business of business, it’s simply a matter of knowing how to best utilize it for your own consultant marketing needs. Here are some pointers.
Email Is Ubiquitous, and Everyone Uses It
Okay, maybe your great grandmother doesn’t use email, but she also thinks the microwave is out to get her. For most people, email is something they at least have, even if they don’t check it every time they open their phone. This makes nearly everybody in the business world a potential contact and client if you just know how to market to them effectively. For consultant marketing, this possibility of connection is invaluable.
Email Marketing Is an Instant Connection
Maybe you’re one of those people who check their email every few minutes even if you aren’t expecting anything. Maybe you keep the tab open at all times, or the mail app icon on your main bar. In any case, email is still the fastest way to connect with the majority of the people you want to reach; people will check it at work, at home, and even while they’re driving (not that they should!). If you want to reach the largest group in the shortest time, email is still your go-to – and if you’re counting on your consultant marketing to drive new leads for your business, why wouldn’t you want that?
People Interact with Email
Sure, every now and again someone will put a specific email address on their blacklist. But more often than not, we at least read the headlines before we delete something. I get emails all the time from companies I may not have used in ages, but you can bet I’m still scanning the headlines before I delete them just in case they’ve finally got something that’ll bring me back to their business. Email gives someone a chance to have your business on their mind, even if it’s just in the split second that they read through your subject line. Just reading your subject line gets them a step closer to a click or a link than they’d be if you’d never sent it.
Email Marketing is Inexpensive
The amount of money you’ll spend to send out an email to your clientele is minimal. Email doesn’t take paper or envelopes or stamps, of course, so you’re just investing in the cost of an email service provider. And, with free intro options from platforms like MailChimp, it’s easy to get started. Once you’ve selected an ESP, you’re simply investing to design and produce a decent email that people will want to click on. After that, it’s just the process of sending to the folks on your list.
There’s so little risk that any potential reward is worth the time. And, considering that email marketing still generates the highest ROI of any marketing channel on average, the reward is certainly worth it.
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Email Marketing is Measurable
Aside from putting forth almost no risk, there are programs and websites that allow you to track data related to your email marketing. You can know exactly how many people opened an email, clicked a link, or followed a link through to a specific page on your site. Using this information makes it extremely easy to find out at which stage in the process you’re losing someone’s attention, and adjust your marketing tactics accordingly.
Email Marketing Gets Results
Remember a few seconds ago when you read a sentence about adjusting your marketing tactics based on the measurable effects of email? Once you know what stage of the process your email recipients are in – consideration, comparison, ready-to-contact for your services – you can make a different set of emails specifically to lead their attention in the appropriate direction to get them onto that next step.
Email Marketing is Personal
If you have the time and the resources to commit to it, you can make an email uniquely personal to engage with your clientele, especially in the business of consulting. If someone is interested in your opinions and advice, they want to know you’re paying attention to their specific needs. Short of a phone call (which is often the next step) there’s nothing more personal or customizable than an email to let your potential client know you’re interested in them as a person, not just as a sale. And unlike a cold call, they can read and respond to an email on their own time.
If you were on the fence about email marketing for your consulting firm, hopefully we’ve given you a reason or two to dive in. Although there are a lot of ways to misuse or underutilize email, keeping these tips in mind should help you to use email to its greatest potential as you continue to network and interact with your consultation clientele. And, of course, if you’re looking to craft a winning email marketing strategy, get in touch with us.
Here’s to winning consultant email marketing!