The Constant Contact Guide to Email Marketing

Reaping the Soft Benefits of Email Marketing

In addition to the direct financial benefits of email marketing, there are a number of other financial benefits that are difficult to track. For example, if your logo appears in an email, you might not see sales from people who drove right over to your store to make a purchase, but it might make your web site seem more familiar to a visitor who has seen the email, and that might make her more comfortable making a purchase at a later date.

These kinds of benefits are known as soft benefits. I can tell you firsthand that soft benefits translate into financial impact, and I can also tell you that you shouldn’t spend any time or money trying to emulate the big money branding strategies you see from large companies in hopes of receiving soft benefits in return.

The right approach to soft benefits is to pay attention to them and let them happen while you’re pursuing measurable direct-response communications. The next sections explain many of the soft benefits you can derive at a low cost while you’re gaining from the more direct benefits of your email marketing strategy.

TOP-OF-MIND AWARENESS

Have you ever spent a lot of time with potential customers teaching them about your products or services, only to find out that they made a purchase from someone else? When you hang up the phone or the customer walks out the door of your office or leaves your web site, the opportunity to stay “top-of-mind” with your customer starts to diminish. ...