Why Email Marketing Still Works

As we’re living in the era of the Internet, choosing the right marketing strategy can be quite difficult if you don’t know what you’re really doing. Currently, some of the most popular internet marketing strategies include search engine optimization, social media marketing, backlinks, content marketing, branding, conversion optimization and email marketing. For those who do not know, email marketing represents one of the oldest strategies of getting in touch with current and prospective customers, to help sell your products and services.

However, due to how old it is, and the social stigma that has been created by spam emails through time, some companies and marketing agencies have given up on the idea of email marketing. Nonetheless, it still works, and thanks to an infographic created by the good people at Website Builder, we know why, and to what extent. After reading this article, you’ll learn why companies and agencies that have decided to not employ this strategy as part of their internet marketing campaigns are making a big mistake.

Read More: A Simple Guide to a Successful Email Marketing Campaign Today

To help put things better into perspective, it’s important to mention that currently, roughly 4.3 billion email accounts send over 196 billion emails daily. Therefore, just about all people living in a home with internet access and who are of age use email to talk to others, send documents, receive pictures, and interact with businesses throughout the world. Stats have shown that email is particularly good when talking to companies, as 77% of customers prefer using email for marketing communications of all kind. Apart from this aspect, it is also important to note the fact that 8% of all retailers present on US soil consider email marketing as one of the most effective, but also efficient ways to implement customer acquisition tactics, and for good reason.

Through these stats alone, we can see how big the potential market for the strategy really is. In fact, reports indicate that right now, there are somewhere around 1.86 billion monthly active users on Facebook, thus putting the number of those who own an email account way above the number of people involved with social media.
While companies are happy with email marketing, so are people. Whether they know it or not, 44% of people who have received targeted marketing emails, have acknowledged that they purchased at least one item, thanks to these promotional messages, thus making them worth it. However, the type of promotional message that they receive can strongly influence their decision. While a good title can encourage an email to be read, if its content is not visually-aesthetic, or it fails to provide a word of action, chances are that users will just delete it.

Read More: 9 Essentials of the Effective Email UX Design

Even worse, some may unsubscribe or report it as spam, which can be detrimental to the well-being of the company sending out these emails. Therefore, it is important to notice that while sending our promotional emails is easy, work should be put into composing these texts and making sure that they fit the industry standard. In return, this will lead to larger conversions, more emails being opened in the future, and stronger brand awareness, which is essential for the success of all companies throughout the world. Not many know it, but email marketing represents one of the key tools which can be employed to efficiently encourage customer loyalty.

Contrary to popular belief that social media is the God above all in terms of marketing, research has shown that at this moment in time, emails are capable of converting three times as many people when compared to social media marketing. While SM is definitely a marketing technique worth approaching by all businesses in the modern age, it only represents the tip of the iceberg, with email marketing covering a large percentage of what is left. Do keep in mind the fact that businesses only employing email marketing as a promotion strategy will not always reach the stars. Multiple marketing strategies used concomitantly, yet proportionally, represent the key to successful customer acquisition, increasing the number of conversions, improving brand loyalty, and simply engaging with the past and future customers.

Studies have also shown that 91% of internet users tend to check their email on their smartphones at least once a day. While not every mail will be opened, especially if it looks like an advertisement, 2/5 will likely be opened, and have its contents read. There are numerous other stats meant to prove that email marketing is still a thing of actuality, including that: 71% of mobile purchasing decisions are mostly influenced by emails received from companies; 80% of marketers consider email as their primary channel used for generating leads, and that email is capable of delivering an ROI 3 times that of social media, with average orders being around 17% higher in terms of their value. Understanding the types of emails that should be sent will heighten the chances of the above statistics proving themselves correct. With this in mind, make sure to send various forms of email, some with less promotional value as well. Some of the most popular types of emails being sent by companies include newsletters, order follow-ups, inactive customer, abandoned cart, and member follow-up emails. Out of this batch, abandoned carts and order follow-up emails have the biggest opening rates, whereas newsletters have the smallest opening rates. In terms of conversions, the order follows up email and the abandoned cart email have the highest chances of encouraging a customer to finish their purchase, or even make the new one, of 5%.

Read More: 15+ Proven Newsletter Email Templates For Your Business

One case study proves this thesis: Email marketing was proven to be the biggest driver associated with Black Friday transactions, as over 25.1% of all sales originated for email marketing. This simply shows how big the market is, and how companies that do not actively employ this technique are missing out.

Based on everything that has been outlined so far, read your email, and if you happen to own a business website, make sure that email marketing represents a priority, or you’ll be missing out.