Email Marketing Boosts Offline Sales

Cross-channel eCommerce is the rule, not the exception in today’s multiple platforms. This often translates into online marketing driving offline sales and boosting better segment opportunities.

Interestingly, it is the traditional email marketing campaign, a recent survey has found, which still performs as a significant sales impetus, even in the age of social media messaging and mobile internet.

It appears that when retailers send out emails to their mailing lists, a boost to offline transactions may be the end result, as much as a fillip to online activity. That a recipient response occurs on a different channel to an outward message, may be familiar news to business owners, but the reminder here is to keep on top of across channel tracking and integration of marketing strategies.

The study found that in the UK, 43 per cent of consumers who receive a marketing email are more likely to make an in-store or phone purchase, while only a small number of consumers indicated that they’d be less likely to make an in-store purchase because of a marketing email.

In addition, it was found that ‘customer facing’ interaction can still provide valuable information. A third of respondents worldwide indicated they would be willing to provide their email addresses to instore sales assistants – another example of the offline feeding into the online.

It has always been absolutely key for companies to know when and how their marketing emails are driving online traffic , and this is no less important for in-store footfall. It demonstrates that established techniques such as coupons and loyalty programs which are targeted online via email, PPC or link building strategies can generate significant offline take up.

By incorporating offline response into online traffic analytics, even more detailed and incisive campaigns can be developed, based on updated and improved segmented email lists which can readily identify obvious, new marketing opportunities.

As mobile internet looks to become more widespread, the tendency will be for multiple channel crossover to increase, accompanied by the enduring role that email plays alongside microblogging and social network messaging.