Over recent decades, marketing strategies have evolved in many ways. They’ve shifted from traditional methods like print and radio to digital approaches such as websites, Google Ads, SEO, and social media. As more people spend more time online, these new approaches tend to overwhelmingly outperform their predecessors. Even so, email is sometimes overlooked and even neglected. Many people still ask us, “Is email marketing dead?” Honestly, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

What Is Email Marketing?

Anyone who uses the internet is familiar with electronic mail aka email. It’s been around for decades, and billions of people now use it regularly. Email addresses allow users to view online content, access banking services, play video games, participate in forums, and communicate with friends or family members. It’s nearly impossible to imagine the 21^st century without it.

Simply put, email marketing is the use of email to promote a business and its products or services. However, that’s only one small part of the picture because modern email platforms are so incredibly flexible. Many of them provide innovative features like automation, data analytics, and ecommerce integration. Plus, marketers are always trying to avoid negative spam complaints, which encourages them to provide value and original content as often as possible.

Believe it or not, email marketing is one of the most consistently scrutinized digital channels. Some are quick to declare it outdated, arguing that a majority of daily deliveries are considered spam and therefore ignored entirely. Those in the know, however, understand that email marketing is very much alive and well.

Email is Everywhere

Most adults (and many teenagers) have access to at least one email address. In fact, over 50% of the global population currently uses email for one reason or another. Many are even willing to share their address in exchange for something they want, which incentivizes companies to produce exclusive digital content.

Many people spend multiple hours a day checking their email inboxes. In fact, according to the 2019 Adobe Email Usage Study, the average consumer spends about five hours a day checking work and personal emails. Though this is slightly less in than previous years, it shows how important email still is to modern life. Given that over half the world’s population now accesses the internet on a daily basis, email is likely to stick around for some time.

With over 4 billion users receiving over 300 billion emails in 2020, companies can use this channel to meet consumers where they already are. And where most people already are is their smartphone. It turns out that in 2020, over half of all worldwide web traffic came from mobile devices. Furthermore, over 40% of all emails were opened on mobile devices, 29% of which on iPhones alone.

It’s worth noting that nearly 30% of global email traffic is truly classified as spam. However, this percentage continues to fall steadily from year to year. Carefully crafted marketing campaigns avoid spam complaints by engaging audiences directly and creating specific content for different demographics. When executed correctly, email marketing often translates to more website traffic, improved customer satisfaction, and an exceptional return on investment.

Plenty of Practical Platforms

Email applications remain a core component of effective digital marketing campaigns. Plenty of free and paid options are available, from Mailchimp and Constant Contact to integrated customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. These platforms are generally intuitive and user-friendly, and many also offer a wide variety of powerful integrations.

Data collection is a notable benefit of many modern email marketing platforms. An understanding of open rate, read rate, and click-through rate helps companies get the most out of each and every campaign. These metrics tend to be easy to assess, and they provide teams valuable insights into their audiences’ actions. Learning what does and doesn’t draw attention is one of the best things about email marketing. Something as simple as changing a subject line or including an appealing image can significantly affect the end result.

Automation is an absolute gamechanger when it comes to email platforms. It allows markets to scale their campaigns almost endlessly while remaining efficient over time. For instance, imagine having to manually type out the first name of every single contact in your email list. There’s just no way this is reasonable, even with a few dozen contacts. Automation allows emails to be effortlessly populated with everything from greetings and phone numbers to addresses and company names. Many CRMs can also schedule emails to send automatically if a user clicks a link, abandons an online shopping cart, or doesn’t respond before a certain amount of time passes.

It's easy to find an email marketing platform that fits your unique needs and budget. Some even offer a free option up to a certain number of contacts or monthly messages. Otherwise, various paid subscription plans allow you to scale your email marketing efforts with ease.

Ridiculous Return on Investment

The world’s first email campaign launched in 1978. Sent to only 400 Arpanet (pre-internet) machines, this promotion generated about $13 million in sales, worth nearly $60 million today. Though competition is now much higher and attention far more difficult to grab, email marketing can still provide companies a significant return on investment (ROI).

There’s no on-size-fits-all approach to digital marketing. However, email is an effective way for entrepreneurs and small businesses to promote themselves on a tight budget. It takes some skill and attention to detail, but with time, email marketing campaigns can generate incredible results.

According to Campaign Monitor, the average ROI for email marketing in 2016 was calculated at 4400%, or $44 in revenue for every dollar spent. It did this, in part, by producing more conversions than social media marketing. Also, automated emails generated over 300% more revenue than their non-automated counterparts. The best part is that marketers can easily gather, efficiently organize, and strategically interact with their email contacts at little cost.

There are many strategies for boosting email marketing ROI. For instance, Litmus reported that A/B testing may increase email ROI by as much as 82%. They also found that personalized emails are 50% more likely to be opened, and birthday emails generate over three times more revenue than standard promotional emails. Furthermore, third-party analytics tools may also boost ROI by up to 16%.

Given how profitable email is, it’s no wonder that 94% of marketers consider it to be among their top 3 most effective marketing channels. Those that don’t take advantage of email put themselves at a disadvantage against competitors who do. The truth is email marketing is simply too profitable for most companies to ignore for long.

Email Marketing Is Alive and Well

When anyone asks, “Is email marketing dead?”, confidently assure them that it’s healthier than ever. A majority of successful companies use emails to deliver targeted, branded content, engage directly with audiences, as well as drive awareness, website traffic, conversions, and revenue.

If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of email marketing for your business, or you need some helpful tips, then please don’t hesitate to reach out and contact us. We can help you create content, schedule high-quality campaigns, and track progress every step of the way. Our team looks forward to helping you shift your marketing into the digital age today.

Originally published on August 13, 2021