A lot has happened since email marketing was first used in 1978. Back when Gary Thuerk, billed as the “Father of spam” sent the first mass email to 400 recipients. This then results in $13M worth of sales for Digital Equipment Corp. But it was not until 20 years later that the word “spam” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
With the rise of inbound marketing and artificial intelligence to name a few, have email marketing started to become irrelevant?
Or is it still extremely relevant? Especially in producing the desired business results for every entrepreneur?
More than half of B2B marketers say that their most effective channel when it comes to revenue generation is still email.
When it comes to returns for every marketing activity, email marketing is still a force to reckon with. We send out at most two emails per week to our mailing list, not “sales email” but value-added emails. And by doing so, we stay connected to our target audience and take a better position regarding the conversation.
86% of business professionals prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes.
Social networks are places we go to have fun and be social. That is the advantage of email over social networks in a business perspective.
Email, being both a personal and business space. Business professionals prefer to hear and build their business through email. There is something about reading a business proposition on email compared to reading it from a blog post or a social content. The impact is more personal and the connection to do business is easily established.
Nearly 105 billion emails are sent each day; this number is expected to reach 246 billion before 2020.
The amount of emails being sent each day is insurmountable. It is probably the busiest digital marketing channel. And with the easy access to mobile, it makes sense to design email for mobile. That speaks a lot about the relevance of this “oldest” marketing channel.
Aside from these, email marketing is cost-effective, personal & it reaches almost everybody. Sending email is free, it connects to your audience on a personal level. Delivering the value that is meant for them and there is no telling where your email would reach after hitting the submit button.
Avoid template emails.
Never, ever send template emails. Write specifically as if you are talking to the recipient, make them feel that they are the object of your communication. It does not take long to write what is in your head. Whatever you want to communicate to every specific recipient. Anything that is templated sounds robotic, the way a template email is written gives it away. The person reading that email can easily determine that there are thousands of others who received that email aside from them.
With it’s growing popularity (still), email marketing is definitely here to stay.
I hope by now that you are already convinced that email is one of the most powerful marketing tools out there.
For most marketers or business owners though, email marketing is still a stumbling block. Instead of a solid foundation to which you can build and grow your business.
Here’s a simple list that would help guide you in running your email marketing.
- Start with a good email marketing plan.
- Incentivise your sign up form. Make sure people have something to download after signing up to your website.
- Research on subject lines that work and that failed
- Be firm in what you want to write. Make it concise, relevant and easy to understand.
- Learn to automate your emails. You would not want to log in 15 times a day, just because you need to send something.
Tap into the potential of your email marketing activity.
So it is quite safe to say that email marketing is like your old friend who won’t go away. It’s just not easy to ignore it. Revisit your email marketing strategy now and build your audience base, your brand through a consistent value-centric approach.
