What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a direct way of reaching consumers that are acutely interested in your business or product via electronic mail, much unlike the random barrages of spam.  

It reaches thousands of potential customers directly at a relatively low cost in comparison to other forms of media exposure and advertising. In addition:

• It can bring your business/ product to consumers through an attractive mix of graphics, links and tailored text directly to potential new customers or those considering the use of your product.
• It also provides a very easy way to track the effectiveness of its marketing, it does this by tracking the hit counts your website receives from consumers clicking on the email links (Brick Marketing – SEO Marketing Solutions Company, 2018).

Is email marketing still relevant to today’s digital marketing channels?

The answer is Yes!
It is relevant now more than ever, it is even still considered the top performer when compared to social media marketing, search engine optimisation and offline marketing (Econsultancy, 2018). 

What businesses still want from their marketing campaigns is leads, and for this email marketing is significantly outperforming its digital marketing channel competitors.

A recent study carried out by Kiss Metrics found that paid search and online advertising were less than half as effective as email marketing  (A Beginner’s Guide to Successful Email Marketing, 2017).

Social media marketing also struggled to top the ranks, while content marketing- relatively a newcomer to the digital marketing channels is performing well but still hasn’t outperformed email marketing. Here are some of the reasons why:

Email marketing is very trusted and cost-effective, with easy implementation, easy measurability and if it is done correctly it drives great insight into consumers behaviors and how your specific brand engages with customers.

With the use of email marketing over a duration of time, a company learns how to execute better conversion rates and which messages resonate the most with consumers. With these invaluable insights, these can be used within all the marketing channels online and off. Helping to improve the overall marketing mix of the business.

 

Over the last decade, the percentage of online consumption has had a steady increase of around 51% of shoppers purchasing online 

(Retail Dive, 2017)

So evidently making content available directly to customers, via email marketing, it increases a company’s chance of raising awareness and potentially attracting new customers.

In fact, 54% of emails sent by businesses are marketing messages, and it is projected that email use will top 3 billion users by 2020

(activetrail, 2017)

 

The role of mobile phones:

Currently, there are an estimated 2.1 billion people who own a smartphone and who use it regularly- this can allow a business to have direct access to customers (Statista 2018).

So if a company formats their emails to be compatible with mobile devices, they can create a direct link and communication with their customers.

This ‘proximity’ generates more opportunities to grow and expand your business while forging a lasting relationship.

• Being immediately available to your consumer reduces the risk of discouraging them from acting on impulse; giving the consumer various opportunities to search for your business at the touch of a screen on the go. 
• Email marketing  can be easily adjusted to trends and technology
• Email is still a professional communication tool, even with the emergence of new communication tools such as facebook, skype etc, email is still the most used business communication tool due to its innate sense of professionalism (Email Client Market Share and Popularity, 2017). 

 

With any channel there are some risks:

Several factors can hinder your success at email marketing which businesses may be quick to forget:

• Spam, with an inundation of solicited or unsolicited emails, many servers now have filters to lessen the number of spam emails received. With a risk that your email marketing could land in someone’s spam folder and never be viewed.  
• Engagement, email marketing requires a constant update to keep subscribers engaged, a consumer will often subscribe to receive an email in order to redeem a promotion or offer and will later unsubscribe.
• Appearance, due to varying servers being used and computer settings, the design in which you may have envisioned may not come through on some consumers displays, which can diminish the impact of your message.
• Cost, email marketing may seem one of the more cost-effective options, however a marketing campaign launch can add up and small businesses may underestimate the final costings, which can lead to them cutting costs, which can result in a poor email marketing campaign (Chron.com, 2018).

 

However, email marketing still remains the king of the digital marketing channels, generating fantastic results for businesses who are willing to customise and put in the time to adapt their marketing practices to their customers (G. Charlton, former chief editor at Econsultancy, 2017).

References:

A Beginner’s Guide to Successful Email Marketing (2017). [ONLINE] Available at: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/beginners-guide-email-marketing/. [Accessed 03 January 2018].

 

activetrail. (2017). Why email marketing is the king of digital marketing. [ONLINE] Available at:

https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/retail-consumer/total-retail/total-retail-categories.html.. [Accessed 1 January 2018].

 

Are you wondering if email marketing is still a relevant channel in 2017?. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.foundrycomms.co.uk/news/2017-04-11-are-you-wondering-if-email-marketing-is-still-a-relevant-channel-in-2017. [Accessed 03 January 2018].

 

Brick Marketing – SEO Marketing Solutions Company. (2018). What is Email Marketing? – Define Email Marketing. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.brickmarketing.com/what-is-email-marketing.htm. [Accessed 03 January 2018].

 

Econsultancy. (2018). Email remains the best digital channel for ROI | Econsultancy. [ONLINE] Available at: https://econsultancy.com/blog/64614-email-remains-the-best-digital-channel-for-roi. [Accessed 03 January 2018].

 

Email Client Market Share and Popularity – (December 2017.) Email Client Market Share and Popularity – December 2017. [ONLINE] Available at: http://emailclientmarketshare.com/. [Accessed 03 January 2018].

Retail Dive. (2018). Survey: E-commerce seeing ‘rapid’ growth with 51% of purchases made online | Retail Dive. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.retaildive.com/news/survey-e-commerce-seeing-rapid-growth-with-51-of-purchases-made-online/420561/. [Accessed 03 January 2018].

Statista. (2018). • Number of smartphone users worldwide 2014-2020 | Statista. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/. [Accessed 03 January 2018].

 

The Disadvantages of Email Marketing | Chron.com. (2018). The Disadvantages of Email Marketing | Chron.com. [ONLINE] Available at: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/disadvantages-email-marketing-3472.html. [Accessed 03 January 2018].

7marketz Digital Marketing Services. (2018). 7marketz Digital Marketing ServicesHow To Optimize Email Marketing Performance: Beginner’s Guide. [ONLINE] Available at: http://7marketz.com/how-to-optimise-email-marketing-performance-beginners-guide/. [Accessed 03 January 2018].