Still an influential marketing channel
When I launched my previous enterprise about 20 years ago in the space of media operations and digital marketing, I still remember many “soothsayers” were prophesying the death of email marketing. Guess what? 2 decades later, this medium is still alive, strong and kicking. While many platforms got consolidated under some bigger brands and marketing clouds like Salesforce and Oracle, the very essence of email marketing is largely prevalent and strong. It continues to provide marketers with a cost-effective means of reaching their target audiences.
Email marketing is not only a form of direct marketing but also the new-age digital marketing that helps promote businesses, products and services. It not only helps in lead generation efforts but also in creating awareness, relationship building, customer engagement and even actual sales. I can myself think of many times that I click on emails and make purchases.
Here, we need to understand how subscription-based email is still strong. Subscription email is the starting point and core of any email marketing strategy. It is the option on a website that allows visitors to receive updates via email by specifying their email addresses in a subscription form. Of course, this is completely different from spam.
Numbers Speak
You may ask why I think it is still relevant?
If you look at statistics, it clearly shows how email marketing can be more resourceful and effective sometimes than even social media marketing. Global e-mail users are over 4.2 billion today and approximately 319.6 billion emails were sent and received every day worldwide in 2021. Meanwhile, in the same period of time, social media usage is also over 3.96 billion (number of people registered on social media), but is more divided. There is not one platform where everyone is present, as social media has multiple platforms. So, while 80% of customers engage with brands on social media, not all social media platforms are designed for this use case.
While running any marketing campaign, one will understand how email marketing is an essential facet. Interestingly, according to the Adestra’s 2016 Consumer Adoption & Usage Study, nearly 68 percent of teens and 73 percent of Millennials said they prefer to receive communication from a business via email. In addition, more than half rely on email to buy things online.
If you are a marketer and looking at ROI, you should know that on average, email drives an ROI of $36 for every dollar spent, higher than any other channel. It is not an understatement when we say that people check their email on a daily basis. We all do, and the best part is that most professionals do this first thing in the morning.
In Pairee Digital as well, I often get to see how a focused email marketing campaign does so much when approached in the right manner.
Email marketing technology
The email marketing technology has evolved so much over the last 2 decades that it can be easily integrated into marketing automation. Email marketing today has to be simplistic, direct, and interactive to make it click-worthy. AI & ML in email helps generate ideas, find better hooks, and pick angles. They also help produce and optimize automated content on a large scale. I do not have to talk about SEO and keywords as they are a given, but AI also refines business forecasts and predicts consumer behaviour all the way to the individual level to make accurate content that engages.
From ensuring long-term loyalty as opposed to short-term gains and social proofing to generate interest, today’s emails can compel your existing audience to take action on other social platforms as well and lead to engagement, sign-ups and even sales. Interactivity and AMP in email, Automation, Gamification, Personalisation, AI and ML and also the dark mode and the design are all new in email marketing today and it is still evolving.
Think about it, you and I may not open every email that we receive as often we get bombarded by them, but we do open some that are interesting and many times we end up acting on the same as well. So, the key is to be able to grab your customer’s attention without intimidating them.
For brands, staying in touch with consumers is much needed and what better way than email marketing? Email marketing technology continues to grow and evolve. And, YES! By no means is it dead yet!