For the Small and Medium-Sized (SME) Lead Generation Benchmark Report 226 industry professionals were surveyed – marketing, sales and business professionals to be exact, who say that far the most effective tool they use is email marketing.
Websites and landing pages are also effective, but drag behind email. Content marketing managed to grab a third place in effectiveness – which is not surprising as in the past years content has a more and more important role in online marketing.
“The most important part of email marketing for SMBs is that it allows a continual dialogue with prospects. It’s very effective in that nurturing process for lead generation—so taking leads that are in various stages and allowing SMBs to provide those prospects with very custom content, regardless of what stage they’re in,” says Todd Lebo, partner and CMO of Ascend2 which conducted the survey.
Email marketing is “easy”
Email platforms seem to be among the easiest tools to use – only one in five respondents claimed that it was difficult for their company to use email marketing.
This is something we can fully agree with – using a good responsive email editor you can create emails that are not only strong in copy, but also can be displayed beautifully in all devices so they can reach all audiences effectively.
The results speak for themselves: three quarters off surveyed SMBs said that they could significantly improve the effectiveness of their lead generation methods with the use of email marketing.
We have to agree that basic email marketing is easy, but if you want to go into greater depths, personalization, segmentation, A/B tests, custom content… everything gets more complicated. In the long run this is the only way you can stay ahead of your competition. It seems that most companies in the report use email marketing as they did it years ago, but times are changing and people need more than just static newsletters.
Email marketing is not going anywhere
There are many who say that in coming years email will lose significance – but the data shows that they might be wrong. Email is still the most popular tool we use in online communication and is not overshadowed by any chat applications. We carry our smartphones with us, read email instantly – all depends on how effectively you create your emails.
But don’t be just another SME which sends out boring newsletters! It’s time to stand out with your content, responsive email design, and especially personalization. The better you know your audience and the more relevant messages you send to them more likely they will buy from you!
Think out of the box!
