The Incredible Value of Email Marketing

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Digital Transformation Strategy (145-slide PowerPoint presentation). Digital Transformation is being embraced by organizations across most industries, as the role of technology shifts from being a business enabler to a business driver. This has only been accelerated by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Thus, to remain competitive and outcompete in today's fast paced, [read more]

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Email marketing has been around for a while, and its value hasn’t gone down over the years, in fact, it’s increased. Everybody loves getting email, but spam not so much. The pleas from Nigerian princes, the erectile dysfunction ads, and the standard chain emails of political myths don’t get the clicks or the opens they used to. People hate spam, and what they dislike even more is getting email content that they’re not interested in from retailers and other businesses, and nor is relevant to their needs.

So how do small and large businesses keep their email marketing relevant? Why do they keep investing money into email marketing when people keep saying they hate spam?

The fact is that sending emails works. Smartly designed and highly targeted emails with actual content works. It takes a coherent strategy to set a clear email marketing system into place, and to carry it out with a very high return on the initial investment.

Email marketing hands-down is the undisputed king when it comes to getting incredible returns for a minimal investment. And here’s proof below from one of the many studies out there showing the effectiveness of email:

1. Email is 40 times more successful in you getting new clients than through Facebook or Twitter.

2. 81% of online consumers who receive segmented emails based on their shopping habits are more likely to make a purchase.

3. Nearly half of B2B businesses say that email is one of their most effective ways of getting new clients.

4. The ROI is unbelievable with email! With every $1.00 spent, $44.25 is the average return on email marketing investment.

5. 59% of marketers say that email is the most effective channel for increasing revenue.

With email as the undisputed driver of revenue for businesses, it is constantly changing with new adaption of technology, it can be hard for businesses to keep up. We suggest that businesses should focus on these three emerging trends to optimize and strengthen their email marketing:

• Segmentation — sorting of your email list based on specific categories shown by your prospects. (Age, gender, product purchase, interest in specific content areas, etcetera). Narrowing your focus actually works and improves your open rate and click-through rates.

• Automated email campaigns — emails that are sent out based on triggers such as web page visits, activation of product or purchase, cart abandonment, and educational drip campaigns. Almost 75% of businesses are missing out on revenue from automated emails.

• Responsive email design — emails have to look great on smartphones, tablets, and on laptops! If your newsletter that looks great on your desktop and doesn’t work on your smartphone, that can actually lead to higher unsubscribe rates and lost leads. 70% of consumers immediately delete emails that don’t work on their mobile phones.

By working on email marketing systems, businesses can keep increasing their revenue, drive relevant traffic to their website, and retain their customers. The value of email marketing is strong, and it will continue to be so for the next few years.

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