When considering online advertising, many companies find themselves divided between email marketing and website advertising. Both help you engage with customers online, but which is more effective?
The marketing experts at Epsilon Individual Automotive are here to look at both advertising forms and answer that question.
What’s the Difference Between Email Marketing and Website Advertising?
While email marketing and website advertising use the internet to connect with potential customers, they each function differently.
Website advertising includes the ads you see on banners, on the top, or on the sides of websites. You may see these on social media websites and elsewhere. These forms of advertising are something that customers see and act on.
Email advertising is brought to the customer, specifically to their inbox. These emails can include sales, loyalty promotions, and product promotions. Typically, customers must opt in to receive these emails, so they already have a connection to your business.
Benefits and Drawbacks of Website Advertising
Website advertising, as we mentioned, tends to rely heavily on banners. These banners can help you appeal to a customer. They are often very noticeable and can help establish consistency across your brand for things like:
- Color
- Voice
- Design
A big advantage to banners is your ability to target customers based on their data. As you market, you gather user data and can use that in additional campaigns to effectively target leads who are more likely to become customers.
What’s the downside of website advertising? The downside is that users are becoming so used to seeing them that they often aren’t being noticed. In a study conducted by Marigold, only a quarter of respondents said they bought something based on a banner ad.1
In addition, banner ads now have to contend with the popularity of ad blockers. These extensions allow consumers to hide advertisements on websites.
Benefits and Drawbacks of Email Marketing
Email marketing has many benefits, one of which is that you are reaching out to your customer rather than waiting for them to come to you. Using data you’ve captured in past marketing campaigns, companies can tailor emails to specific products your customer may be interested in.
There are also many types of email marketing available, so your customer is not fed the same information in the same way every time. Email marketing can include:
- Newsletters
- Product Launch Emails
- Promotional Emails
Through these emails, you can build a relationship with your customer. A customer who trusts your business is more likely to buy from you.
One disadvantage of email marketing is quantity. If you send too many emails, they may be marked as spam or ignored. Many other businesses are also competing for your customer’s time and attention, so it can take a little more effort to stand out from the crowd.
Email Marketing vs Website Advertising: Which Is More Effective?
In many ways, email marketing and website advertising are two sides of the same coin. You want to reach your customer while they’re online. With the rise of ad blockers, website advertising has decreased effectiveness. However, if you have already connected with the customer, email marketing may help you retain and remind your customer of that relationship.
The marketing experts at Epsilon Individual Automotive would say that email marketing, on the whole, is more effective, but that it works well with other advertising options, like website marketing. Learn more about how you can advertise your automotive business by contacting our experts today.
