Using Email Marketing: outdated or still an effective marketing strategy?

Source: PA Marketing

There is no denying the development of technology today with more competitive marketing methods and can follow social crazes or new geographical goals like social media and SEO. Email is probably being left behind with efforts to find and nurture potential customers. But what if you think that email has become obsolete? Wait, look at these stats:

•  In 2020, there are are more than 4 billion (Statista 2021) email users globally
•  More than 376.4 billion (Statista 2021) emails are sent and received every day
• 73% of Millennials (Forcey 2020) prefer email marketing.

Similar to other social platforms, email is also constantly evolving and improving day by day. As a fundamental part of life, email marketing is effective and closely related to brands that are maintaining relationships with customers. For those who believe in the power of Facebook and Instagram to build sketchy content, email marketing will stand out with businesses' careful content investment and a chance to win back the " protagonist" on the overall strategy.

 So, what does email marketing have to "retain" customers? This blog will show you three factors that confirm email marketing is still viral and some ways to use email marketing not to be an outdated option for any business if used correctly.

1. A high volume of email traffic and usage every day

Many platforms are competing with each other for the attraction of consumers. However, most social media users do when they wake up is check their email inbox. According to impressive statistics from Hubspot, the number of people checking email daily day is up to 99% (Kristensen 2021). Workers in the United States admit that they check and respond to emails at a frequency of several times per hour. And more than 50% (Lyfe Marketing 2019) of customers prefer to receive information from brands they follow via email. It can be said that this is a rich source of customers to help businesses in email marketing.

High email traffic and usage are advantageous, but it will be wasteful if businesses do not segment customers into clear groups and only send similar emails in bulk. Not every consumer who subscribes to a business newsletter will be interested in the same information or at the same buying stage as other customers. For the interaction to be promoted most effectively, email marketing needs to reach the accuracy of the message, and the content conveyed at the right time to the target customer that the business is aiming for. Regardless of new potential customers or maintaining old customer relationships, every communication needs to target their consumer psychology and preferences.

2. Direct access

It is not sure that the messages or content of businesses shared on Facebook or Instagram will reach their customers effectively unless they have to run many ads and sometimes have to ask for support from influencers/KOLs. But with email marketing, businesses can be relatively sure that their information has reached the target customer, or put, it has been "smoothly" in the customer's inbox. For B2B companies, 81% (Handley et al 2019) of marketers say that reaching customers via email is their most-used marketing tool. Another feature that makes business email more effective is separating spam from legitimate contacts. This helps their email go straight to the primary inbox, reducing the chance of being automatically pushed to spam. And it is not surprising that when this success rate is up to 85% (Mowry 2018), businesses have also become bolder in using this method as one of the marketing options worth considering.

But to encourage customers to open your business letter, message personalization requires effort. Recipients are 26% (Campaign Monitor n.d) more likely to open an email if the subject line targets their psyche. This reflects that email personalization will easily attract customers' attention. So along with the advantage of direct access, businesses should not skip this step to take advantage of the opportunity to communicate with customers in the best way to market their products or services.

3. Useful ROI metrics

"Email marketing is considered a very profitable marketing engine for many businesses." Why do you say that? In a study by Litmus, $1 spent on email marketing can increase profits 42 times (Litmus Software n.d). So is there any platform that dares to commit to that business? Or even in some cases, the tool will be free for small and medium enterprises.

Source: Digit Marketer

As the image above shows, the profits from email marketing for all fields are indeed not small. Therefore, many businesses also admit that their revenue tends to increase (Demand Metric 2019) since using email as a marketing method to promote success and attract customers' attention. Low affordability and high growth potential have made email marketing still one of the best technical marketing strategies. However, to maintain this benefit and build a strong relationship, businesses must solve the questions, problems, and requirements that customers give, which is the most abundant source of revenue. Note, this is only a fraction of the beneficial ROI.

 

Conclusion

The above factors have proven that email marketing tools are not outdated and bring benefits to potential customers for the company. Moreover, it also helps businesses have specific revenue from this email method. So, it can be seen that it doesn't matter which platform a company chooses to market on, but each different forum has its advantages and grows every day. Therefore, businesses must know how to take advantage and develop marketing campaigns to best suit their business.