You’ve Got Mail, a love story centered around the simple excitement of email, is almost 25 years old. While you may be surprised at how many years have passed since this classic movie hit the theaters, it’s not completely surprising that, in the modern marketing landscape, email is sometimes considered an older method of marketing. Email can often fall by the wayside because it is considered antiquated, ineffective or just plain boring.
Even though email can get a bad rap, email marketing is here to stay. It’s all a matter of strategy and execution.
With thoughtful strategy and careful execution (not to mention bold design, compelling copy, and thoughtful calls to action), email marketing can compete with the best and brightest of the newer online marketing strategies. Let us show you why.
Everyone (still) emails
Think about it by the numbers: One study by Fourth Source found that 92% of Internet users have at least one email account, which is considered by some to be at least 4 billion people. Of those in America specifically, just about everyone checks their email (or emails) at least once a day, and likely, many more.
This gives marketers millions of opportunities to capitalize on email as a way to connect with their clients in any one of a number of ways, and new tools are continually coming out to help with this. For example, many platforms now allow hyper-segmentation to the point that marketers can create a subset on their email list that targets people in specific geographic areas.
This is perfect if you’re trying to drive people to an event or brick and mortar store. In order to do that though, marketers need to know who they’re emailing and why.
Email can be used for a variety of goals
Whether your marketing goals include conversion, brand awareness, relationship building or something else entirely, email marketing can help you get there.
As we mentioned before, almost everyone has at least one email account, far exceeding the percentage of people on any social media platform (the number of people using email is more than Facebook and Twitter combined).
Social media is also filtered through algorithms, which decreases the likelihood that everyone who follows your account will be exposed to your content on a given day, while email marketing goes directly to them.
This increases the likelihood that your target audience will engage with your content and contribute to you meeting your goals, which is probably why email has had the highest ROI of any marketing channel in the last 10 years.
Email can be an insurance policy that you will be able to get your brand’s name in front of everyone on your list, rather than 10% of your followers on Instagram.
Email connects and integrates better than anything else
Want to drive customers to a new landing page? They can access it through email. Hoping to spread brand awareness with a new marketing video? It can be integrated into an email.
Content Marketing Institute’s 2020 B2C Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report states that content marketers see email newsletters as their highest performing content type for both securing leads and reinforcing relationships.
If your emails are providing value to the people on your contact list, then your audience will look forward to hearing about what is going on with your brand, and doing this is a very affordable option for businesses of all sizes.
MailChimp and platforms like it have several levels of plans that will work for any budget to help your marketers bring quality content to your audience for a few cents. Plus, these platforms are completely data driven which enables you to test and track what’s working and what could be working better to continuously optimize your strategy.
In short, email makes sense. Then, and especially now.