Is Still Email Marketing Effective? Five Reasons to Believe It Is

Email marketing is an age-old marketing channel. Isn’t the sentence is a cliched one? But sometimes we all get along with cliché.

Even at the beginning of the 21st century, marketers believed it was. Though, most successful business owners were happy to use email marketing as a powerful marketing weapon. And, more and more people keep relying on it even today.

But the question remains. Is still email marketing effective enough? The rise of social media, video platforms, and the use of mobile phones drastically change people’s behavior. How frequently they open their mailboxes today like they used to ten years ago? Evidently, you interact with social media posts faster than any other thing nowadays, right?

Hence, the debate going on. What is that data and industry leaders are telling us? Today we are going to show you the whole thing, and try to find out either email marketing is still can working big time for your business or not. Keep reading.

How Email is Doing Right Now in Numbers

The current global population stands at 7.9 billion. According to Statista, 4.03 billion of them are using email in 2021. And, the number is expected to grow as high as 4.48 billion by the end of 2025. So you see, how gigantic the numbers are.

If you look at social media, Facebook has 2.2 billion monthly active users. Happily, you can add the 1+ billion Instagram users too. But even the combined numbers can’t come closer to emails.

Furthermore, email has a 90% of penetration rate amongst US users, where Facebook claimed a 69% penetration rate amongst US adults.

Percentage of internet users in the United States who use e-mail as of November 2019, by gender

The more people using emails means it offers bigger possibilities as a marketing channel. And, undoubtedly, email marketing has the highest ROI (Return on Investment). Though, different sources claimed different stats. However, they all show a clear winner, and that is email marketing compared to any other marketing channel.

Campaign Monitor found, email marketing ROI can be as high as 4400%, which means a $44 ROI for every dollar spent. On the other hand, Benchmark goes for $38 for $1 on average ROI for email marketing. Both rates are insane. And, they are enough reasons to prompt more than 47% of marketers to choose email marketing as the most effective marketing channel.

5 Reasons Why You Should Go for Email Marketing

Nothing can succeed without a proper plan. Numbers can’t save you unless you understand why email marketing is still so powerful. It is like, you know that how game-winning your emails can be. But this goes the same for your competitors too. So, you must do things differently, and hit all the right buttons.

Below, we are going to show you some of the top reasons to let you realize what makes email marketing effective even today. Let’s check them out.

1. Newsletters are Winner – Send Newsletters that Convert

You will be astonished to know how successful your newsletters can be. However, most businesses don’t realize its potential. That’s why you can see millions of trash in your inboxes. Random newsletters never going to get the results you desire. If you push too hard to sell, your emails going nowhere.

Very likely, the people who subscribe to your newsletters don’t want to purchase all the time. Hence, if they find it that you only want to make them buy something each time you reach their inboxes, that would be a blunder.

Tips: 10 Newsletter Idea to Boost Email Engagement & Engage Your Readers

You must send newsletters that convert. For example, the Washington Post’s newsletters got an average of 30% open rate. Take a look at their Daily 202 email.

If you look closely, you will find the newsletter included exactly the things they promised to include. It is designed to send the subscribers very curated must-read news and events. They even include a special music video, because video email marketing becomes popular day by day.

Let’s go for another example.

As a premium fashion brand, Patagonia is doing great. Their newsletters speak for them. And you never get bored of getting them in your mailbox. They are enjoyable. And, you will get some facts, history, or even a short film or interesting videos sometimes.

Why do newsletters still work? When a subscriber opens your email, for those certain seconds or minutes they invested solely in your content. They feel no distraction because there aren’t any newsfeeds like social media or playlist suggestions like YouTube.

You just make sure that you stick to your promises, and don’t annoy the subscribers. The rest will be assured.

2. You Don’t Need a Big Budget to Send Emails

Creating videos is expensive in any sense. After creating them, you must promote them. Hence, paid ads or promotions in social media also can cost you a huge amount of money. Though email marketing also costs your dollars, how much compared to the other medium?

The average spends for outsourcing a social media marketing campaign is $900 to $7000 per month.

WebFX

Most of the major email automation platforms are way more affordable than paid ads, social campaigns, and print media, The latter one is still effective but demands a significant chunk from your marketing investment. On the other hand, email marketing can deal more closely with your potential customers. Moreover, it helps a lot to keep the relationship closer.

Suppose, you have a WordPress-based site for your company. And, you have weMail. Installing it on your site would be absolutely free. What you need to pay for the sending gateway. There are multiple Sending APIs you can choose and start sending your email campaigns.

Look at the comparison below.

Popular email marketing platform like Campaign Monitor or MailChimp will cost you a minimum $299 a month. On the other hand, you can just get along with weMail, and select your favorite sending API with a minimum cost of $18 a month.

As for sending highly engaging newsletters, weMail have a full-fledged template library, and all the major email automation features available in the market. Therefore, if you are a small business owner, email marketing can be your all-around marketing solution.

Hence, all the above email solutions aren’t expensive if you consider the cost of other marketing channels.

According to Economical Impact & Google Ads, “Businesses make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on paid Ads.” Linked In claimed, almost 92% of online ads aren’t even noticed.

3. Combining Effective Email Marketing and Social Media is Simple

Evidently, marketing channels are not mutually exclusive. That means you run your email marketing effectively even by combining it with social media marketing. Though both channels are different in regard to how they work, they can walk side by side to achieve a single goal – connect users, and convert them.

Steven Garland (Lead of content, LeadGibbon) found the below example of Product Hunt’s social post and newsletters which looks pretty impressive.

Jeffbullas

What Product Hunt doing is, sharing similar content and language in their Twitter post and emails. The tactic is effective. It helps to create a strong brand voice. Inspire people to retweet and share their content more often.

Garland shared another use case comes from Notion, a productivity app. They recycle a lot of content between their social media posts and email marketing. Notion usually shares a lot of GIfs about their product features before any new releases. Therefore, they send the same content while sending newsletters to their subscribers.

And, these are just examples, you can improvise these techniques the way you love. It’s an open-ended field to use your creativity. Hence, we have sorted out a handful of effective suggestions that will guide you to combine effective email marketing with social media in the easiest way possible.

Test Your Social Media Ad Copy in Your Emails

If they work, you are on with the tone you need for better conversion. As organic reach is getting lower day by day in platforms like Facebook and Twitter. So, if any of your ad copy works finely in email campaigns, you can use them in your social media posts.

Grow Email List with Social Post

Add an email sign-up link to each of your social posts. This will work like magic. From each of your engaging social posts, many people would love to subscribe to your email newsletters.

Add Social CTAs in Your Newsletters

We do this frequently with each of weMail newsletters. Adding a social CTAs helps to connect the email community with your social media activities.

Now you can see the whole picture. Email marketing allows you to expand your user community even more, and it will not take much effort too.

4. Email Marketing Strengthen Your Customer Relationship

In regard to building customer relationships, email marketing is the most personal way. Therefore, personalization is the key to this marketing channel. If you want your email campaigns to succeed, you must care for each and every email subscriber you have. No other platform will let you this easy approach to accomplish this goal.

For example, you can ask which types of emails your subscriber want to get into their inboxes. You can easily find out what types of content people love most in their email, and react faster. As a result, when you know which type of emails your customers and potential ones may open willingly, you can help them even more. The whole process takes time, responses from both parties, that eventually lead to trust.

The goal is to provide inspiring information that moves people to action.

Guy Kawasaki

Here, look at the promotional email of PhoCafe.

Really Good Emails

This visually stunning email is driving its target customer to take an action. If anyone of them shows this email, they will get a Free dish. Of course, this will bring them a lot of new customers too. What works most in this newsletter? It shows the restaurant cares for their subscribers, and they send emails because they want to help.

Furthermore, you can strengthen your customer relationship with email by following the below tips –

• Sending discount and incentives emails.
• Sending specially curated blog content.
• Ask subscribers for their opinion regarding your services.
• Run marketing surveys, etc.

You can also look at this email from Unsplash which is an image-sharing platform, and one of the biggest in the world indeed. This email gives you a feel that the Unsplash community does care for you.

Unsplash sends people the most discussed and sought-after photographs of 2020. And ask them to send their opinion and choice by mentioning them on Twitter. Hence, this is also a good example of blending social media and email marketing in the coolest way possible.

5. Reach Out Interested People and Spread Social Awareness

One of the biggest advantages of effective email marketing is this – you only reach those people who are willing to hear from you. If someone subscribes to your emails, that means he/she wants to get what you have to offer through your newsletters and promotions.

Therefore, we have already know the reality. Making sales isn’t the only objective of email marketing. It is more than that, and as a business owner, you can engage with social welfare by using this platform.

Essential Reads: Best Ways to Reach Your Audience During COVID-19

There are many occasions, events, and situations that can affect the marketplace. For example, the covid-19 pandemic has been shaking the world from late 2019 to 2020. And, it does not stop even this year. So, how can you engage with people who are suffering from losses? Email marketing evidently plays a vital role in such circumstances.

Renowned headphone brand AfterShokz sends this email following thanksgiving day to all of their subscribers.

In this email, they want to thanks their supporters, and inspire them to help people during the pandemic. At the bottom of the email, they don’t forget to include the link to the newest offers, discounts, and rewards. If you read the newsletters, you can feel they put the selling intention as a minor objective here. That’s how you can achieve your position in even spreading social awareness with email marketing. The whole thing will only end up boosting your brand value.

Do the Most Effective Email Marketing, Achieve

We have discussed only a few reasons we believe are enough to establish the fact. Email marketing is still the most effective marketing channel. There’s no denying it if you think logically, and go for the statistics. The most crucial thing that makes it more powerful is its openness. The compatibility of email marketing is almost dynamic. It can change with time, mix things up if needed, does not have any conventional rules which you can’t break.

So, let’s answer this question. Do you have a proper plan, the right email automation tools, and a well-defined business goal? Then what you need is only the confidence to execute your most successful email marketing campaigns.

Want to join the discussion? Tell us what you think in the comments section.