In October, I encouraged you to “mix up your media.” This month, in Stock Marketing, I want to focus on direct e-mail marketing – also known as e-Blasts. Most of you are probably familiar with e-Blasts because they fill your inboxes with coupons, announcements and sales each day, but have you thought about using an e-Blast to promote your farm? If not, I want to give you a few perks of e-mail marketing to mull over.
- It’s growing – But don’t believe me, check out some of these stats put together by PR Daily. According to information gathered by the Direct Marketing Association, there are 3.3 billion e-mail accounts throughout the world. And e-mail marketing doesn’t mean your audience needs to be glued to a computer – eight out of 10 smartphone users check and send electronic mail from their phones, and of those eight, half check their e-mail as soon as they wake up. That’s enough to convince a lot of marketers to invest in e-mail campaigns, resulting in a steady 10 percent growth of e-mail marketing in the US.
- It’s direct – E-mail gives producers a way to directly target a very specific group of potential customers. These messages can even be personalized to include each recipient’s name. This extra personalization and targeted messaging means more opened mail.
- It’s easy to track – Have you ever wondered how many people have paused over a print advertisement? How many readers do you think sought out more information about your operation on the Web? Unless someone called you and specifically referred to your print ad, you’ll likely never know. But, with email marketing, you know exactly how many people opened your message to view it, and even how many potential buyers decided to “click through” the e-mail to find more information by visiting the links you embedded.
- It’s affordable – Without the added costs of ink and paper, e-mail marketing is a very affordable option for producers. In fact, if you were to use the National Swine Registry’s e-Blast service, the average cost for each name reached is less than 3 cents.
I hope that these points will help you consider adding e-Blasts to your advertising arsenal in 2013. As always, feel free to contact the Marketing & Communications staff here at the National Swine Registry. We are happy to help you find the right marketing platforms to promote your purebred genetics!