Fall in love with email again

It seems that not a month goes by without the pundits decrying that email is dead, yet it remains one of the most powerful and profitable channels for customer and prospect communications.  Nearly 105 billion emails are sent each day; this number is expected to reach 246 billion before 2020. And 73% of millennials identify email as their preferred means of business communication.

Steward Butterfield and Cal Henderson, founders of Slack, described email as the cockroach of the internet “nobody likes it, but it is impossible to eradicate” Not the nicest description, but it has a very real point – email is here to stay and remains one of the most effective communication media, embraced by the mass market. Indeed, the number of email users worldwide is forecasted to rise to 2.9 billion in 2019.

Although email marketing has been around for a while, it continues to drive significant results. Even with the rise in popularity of other marketing platforms like social media, email marketing is still one of the best tactics that brands can use to reach and engage their target audience. Email’s conversion rate is higher than social and search combined.

Accessible 

How many times do you find yourself opening up your email on your computer or mobile device? Whether it’s work-related or personal, most people check their email at least once a day to see what new messages they’ve received. So you have the benefit of getting in front of your audience on a regular basis.  

Cost effective 

Email marketing is relatively inexpensive when compared to other traditional marketing tactics such as direct mail and print media. While these traditional print marketing tactics require you to spend money on printing and advertising space, email marketing requires only a small investment of time and resources in developing effective content. In addition to relatively low operational costs, email marketing also provides an attractive return on investment (ROI). In the UK, every one pound spent on email marketing has an ROI of 38 pounds.

Automatable 

Email marketing automation allows you to automate your sales cycle. Your business can use email automation tools to develop email drip campaigns, which send email messages to individuals on a set schedule, helping you create automatic touch points with customers. You can also set up automation campaigns to trigger certain messages when a user takes an action on your website. For instance, if the customer visits your pricing page but then leaves your site, you can reach back out to them through an automated message to ensure that they don’t have any further questions.

Every e-commerce company is familiar with the dreaded abandoned cart. Consumers visit your site, put items in their shopping cart, and then leave without making a final purchase. Whether they get busy with something else or want to take time to think about their purchase, it is vital that you take the opportunity to reengage these customers. With email automation, you can send an automated email message to these consumers, encouraging them to come back to your site and finalize their purchase.

Targeted 

Another one of the major benefits of email marketing is list segmentation. This allows you to segment or separate your email list into different groups with relevant characteristics or interests. Once you have done this, you can start to deliver more targeted content to your readers. This increases relevancy and value, which can encourage more conversions.

One of the greatest benefits of email marketing is that email allows you to personalize your messaging and offering to reach the right audience at the right time. Not only can you use segmentation to ensure that readers are getting the most relevant and effective content, but you can also address readers by name and speak directly to them. Your email subscribers are more likely to respond to content that seems like it was written just for them. In fact, according to HubSpot, emails that include the first name of the recipient have higher click-through rates than those that don’t.

Fall in love with email again 

Email might date back to the early days of the internet, but it remains a force to be reckoned with. With email accessible on the go via smart phones and the possibility to create sophisticated automations, email might be used differently to the batch-and-blast days of old but that has only increased its efficacy.