Email marketing is not dead! People have been jokingly referring to email marketing as “the dinosaur” of online marketing strategies but with the pandemic happening, email marketing has become one of the most important tools for brands.
In 2021, there are around 4 billion email users globally and the majority of them check their email at least twice a day. Facebook has over 2.2 billion monthly active users and Instagram has around 1 billion, those are the two most popular platforms today. But even if you add them together, they still don’t come close to the potential reach and number of email users.
1. Increases E-commerce Sales
Covid-19 has triggered a surge in online shopping and brands have been using email marketing to maximize their e-commerce sales. A 2020 B2C Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report by the Content Marketing Institute claims that marketers find email marketing as the most cost-effective tool for securing and nurturing leads. Sending a simple abandoned cart email has proven to convince a customer to make a purchase. An abandoned cart email is a simple follow up email to someone who has forgotten to buy the items they added on their cart. This type of email has become one of the most effective strategies for boosting sales.
2. Prepare Brands for Post-Cookie World
In case you haven’t heard, third-party cookies will be banned by 2022. Brands use cookies to track user activities and collect data to target ads to the right audiences. To prepare for the big change, brands can start mining useful data from their email marketing campaigns. Aside from basic information such as name, birthday, and gender, there are thousands of ways to understand customers through their email activity and behaviour which will be valuable when cookies are gone.
3. Strengthens Relationships with Customers
Everyone hates getting spammed, we know because we hate it too. That’s why it’s important to send targeted and personalised emails that correlate with each customers’ needs and interests. With email marketing, businesses can segment emails based on lead status, demographics and shopping behaviour which strengthens relationships with customers. AI (Artificial Intelligence) is recently used to help craft a subject line and content that resonates with each individual on their email list. Campaign Monitor found that marketers who created personalised campaigns have increased revenue by 760%.
4. Reach the Right People at the Right Time
Believe it or not but Send Time Optimization is a thing and it is very important. The time when an email was delivered hugely affects whether or not they will be read. Email marketing can make brands reach people in the exact optimal time for each contact to make sure they read the email. Unlike on social media, postings may not be seen by other users due to different time zones making it less effective for reaching more people.
5. High Return of Investment (ROI)
Email marketing is cheaper than other marketing methods. Yes, you do have to pay for content creation and marketing tools but those are the main expenses. For the past 10 years, email marketing has yielded the highest ROI compared to other marketing channels. For a dollar spent, brands can earn an average of $44 from a customer purchase or response to a promotional email.
6. Easily Measurable
The last key benefit of email marketing is how easy it is to measure the effectiveness of each email. Marketers can effortlessly tell what they have done right or wrong by reviewing the conversations, unsubscribe, click-through and response rates. Such information is provided automatically and available on demand when using an email marketing tool.
As we move further into 2021, email marketing will surely become a bigger focus for many businesses since it increases customer retention. Stay on top of the game by crafting your own email marketing strategy, you never know what it can do for you.
Need help with Email Marketing? We partner with Active Campaign, HubSpot, Mail Chimp and Klaviyo to ensure that we use the right CRM tool for your business. Let’s work together.
