February 28, 2018

Some panelists at the ongoing 2018 Social Media Week Lagos on Wednesday urged the public to embrace email marketing as a veritable platform for advertising their businesses.

At a session titled “Email Marketing and Lead Nuturing: Generate, Engage and Convert”, the panelists said that embracing the platform would help build relationships for their businesses.

Email marketing is one segment of internet marketing which encompasses online marketing via websites, social media, blogs, etc.

It is essentially the same as direct mail, except that instead of sending mail through the postal service, messages are sent electronically via email.

At the panel, Mr Deola Kayode, a Digital Strategy Manager with Insight Advertising, said that email marketing was a powerful platform to explore in building relationships.

Kayode said that relationships had to be built on trust, like-ability and credibility of one’s product.

The relationships built, he said, helped in giving value to businesses.

“Building relationships is key to business success as regards email marketing.

“In achieving the goal for your business, there is need for one to understand its audience, think about the problem to be solved, define them and streamline one’s budget for proper productivity.

“Email marketing literally allows one to prime the person to sell his or her product to and it will also help in spotting the difference in the product you want to buy,” he said.

Another panelist, Ms Omodara Adediran, Account Manager, said that the greatest problem was people’s understanding of the relevance of email marketing to their businesses.

She said that email marketing helped people to plan better and save cost for their businesses.

According to Adediran, a business person should go into marketing campaign before embarking on email marketing to make it more efficient and effective.

“In doing a good email marketing, you need to profile and understand your customers and the platform.

“There should be a call to action in an email to attract people’s attention and the business owner’s understanding of the consumer journey and integrate into the business,” she said.

She stressed that understanding the consumer journey would enable the business owner not to get lots of rejections.

Also, Mr Abayomi Ojo, Founder, House of Jethro, said that understanding one’s audience and content was key in email marketing.

He listed some stages that one had to pass through for successful email marketing as awareness stage, consideration and decision making stage

“Consideration helps one to drive sales, and in doing so, the subject line needs to be concise, brief and catchy to get attention.

“One needs to also research the subject line and how it relates to the buyer, target your customer to understand where you are heading.

“In doing all these, one needs to understand that timing for sending out the email is very important,” he said.

On his part, Mr Ayeni Ekundayo, Co-founder, Email Forest, said that there is money to be made in an individual’s email and urged the public to utilise the platform.

He listed some principles of email marketing as: printing of account, creating a list, uploading data base and campaign.

Ekundayo said that education was key on the email marketing platform, adding that there was need for the public to be abreast of the platform’s potential by utilising it.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Social Media Week Lagos is currently in its 6th edition, with this year’s edition having the theme: ‘Closer’.

The week-long event started on Monday, Feb. 26 and will end March 2.

The event features a wide variety of discussions covering the Future of Media, Travel and Tourism, Governance, Gender inclusion with a dedicated Women in Tech platform, Entertainment as well as emerging ideas and trends across the globe.