Years ago many businesses might have claimed that sending out paper
flyers to their customers was a highly effective form of advertising. Just
about every consumer can recall seeing their mailbox stuffed with
flyers or having a flyer tacked onto their windshield. Some people
might have read these flyers while others quickly cast them aside. But
from the business' point of view, enough people read (and often acted
upon them) to make it an effective platform for spreading their
message. The traditional paper flyer's time in the limelight as a
viable and effective marketing vehicle has, for all intensive purposes,
come to an end. Paper flyers have been replaced by a new,
environmentally friendly and far more effective platform.
Most businesses have made the switch to email flyers. Here are just some of the reasons why.
Most
businesses have come to realize that, with email flyers, there is no
need to hire an expensive designer and no need to incur costly printing
fees. Since most email flyer programs let the actual business owner,
manager, or marketing team simply point-and-click their way to a
professional eye-catching email flyer, the costs are significantly
lower. This also heavily decreases the amount of lead time needed to
launch an email flyer campaign. In the past, the business owner would
have needed to factor in all the design, printing and distribution
time. Now with email flyers, that is all cut down to a matter of
minutes. Just about every business operator will tell you that time is
amongst the scarcest resources they have, so the fact that email flyers
alleviate that big time sink of traditional paper flyers is a big
benefit.
Email flyers also help extend the businesses messages,
due to the viral nature of email. Most email flyer programs will have a
'forward to friend' option that further encourages the spreading of the
email. With traditional paper flyers, there is practically zero
forwarding of the message at all. How many people do you think get a
flyer stuffed in their mailbox and think "You know what, I'm going to
photocopy this and pass it out to my friends at work!" I can guarantee
you not many! But, with the power of email, anyone who receives your
email flyer can easily use the special 'forward to friend' option
embedded in the content, or they can simply click the forward button on
their email program. In either case, more people are seeing your
message. In addition, since your email flyer is being passed along to
someone's friend or associate, it instantly gains even more credibility.
While
traditional paper flyers leave the business owner flying blind in terms
of results, email flyers completely alleviate this shortcoming and put
tons of information at your fingertips. When you send out an email
flyer, you can track all aspects of its progress and success. You can
see the exact percentage of people who have opened your email flyer,
and even drill down to know exactly which contacts opened the email
(and even what time they opened it!). With email flyers you can also
track exactly who is clicking on links included in your content, and
also who is forwarding your message to their friends. With this
information readily available, business owners can make important
decisions on how to improve their promotional campaigns. They'll know
exactly what adjustments to make to so their email flyers can be even
more effective. Compare this with the "send out paper flyers, cross
your fingers and hope for the best" approach, and it's clear just why
so many businesses are now harnessing the power of email flyers and
email marketing.
While the benefits of email flyers over
traditional paper flyers go on and on, one issue worth mentioning is
that email flyers are a lot more environmentally friendly. With an
overall push by global forces to treat our environment better, it's
clear that sending out digital email flyers that produce no waste is
far better for the environment than printing thousands and thousands of
paper flyers. Even if we all hope that those paper flyers will be
recycled, we know that ultimately not all of them will end up in a blue
box. That means they have to end up somewhere and that may be the trash
or it may be litter on our streets. No matter where it ends up, it's
clear that Mother Nature wouldn't be too happy. With email flyers,
there is no waste and no litter. Many larger organizations,
particularly in the USA, have switched to email flyers to be more
environmentally conscious. As you can see tough, that's just one of the
benefits of email flyers.
There is no doubt that email flyers
are the evolution of paper flyers and have a plethora of added
benefits. Email flyers consistently prove more effective to businesses
and ultimately yield a greater return on investment. With more
businesses latching onto email flyers, we can all expect to see less
paper flyers landing in our mailbox and more email flyers landing in
our inbox.