Is Email Marketing Dead?

Nope, hold your horses, because the future of email is very bright.

Did you just say email marketing is dead?

Think again.

• Checking emails is the first thing 58% adults do, early in the morning
• The total number of email accounts has crossed 6.32 billion and is likely to reach 7.71 billion by the end of 2021, marking a growth of over 22%.
• 3.7 billion people across the world, send and receive at least 269 billion emails every day.
• The numbers of legitimate emails that are sent every hour add up to about 3,104,450,712.
• With more and more people preferring to use smartphones over desktops and laptops, more than 51% of the emails are opened using mobile devices.

The launch of multiple channels to reach out to customers could have forced a few of the traditional marketing methods to close down. But email marketing is definitely not one of them.

Not all emails that are sent get opened. Most of the recipients promptly delete them or unsubscribe from receiving them, almost every day. Still, it doesn’t mean that email marketing is dead. It is only that the strategy has changed. But first, let’s talk about the need to get into email marketing. Later in the discussion, we will share a few, racy tips on how to actually do it!

Why Email Marketing is Good for Your Business

1. Because, past studies indicate that if you adopt the right strategy you should be able to see a 4300% return on your investments through email marketing.
2. Emails make it possible for businesses to remain at the forefront of their consumers’ minds, providing an opportunity to follow-up. They make it easier to enhance sales, thereby maximizing the returns on investment. This is one of the main benefits of email marketing and why you should do email marketing for your business.
3. As per statistics released by Convince & Convert, people who purchase products based on email promotions end up spending 138% more than those that come through other channels.
4. Not only is email marketing alive and kicking, it has come way beyond the social media hype. When it comes to driving new sales, email is at least 40 times more effective than Twitter and Facebook put together.
5. As per McKinsey & Company, after the organic search it is email marketing that makes for the best way to acquire new customers.
6. More than 59% of marketers agree that email is the most effective channel to generate revenue. So, if you haven’t been using email marketing to promote your business, you are losing an extremely valuable opportunity to make big money.
7. If not for the false predictions made by the so-called experts, no one would have asked the question, ‘is email marketing dead’? In fact, the reality is quite the other way around. With the passing of each and every year, email marketing is getting more and more powerful and strong. It is something that has been dominating the marketing world and will continue to do so for many more years to come.

The rise of instant messaging and social media has done little to diminish the position of email as the highest performing and most cost-effective marketing channel ever.

Every digital entrepreneur who has made it big understands the significance of email when it comes to communicating with customers. There is no way this is going to change anywhere in the near future.

There are many benefits of email marketing that you can hardly see in any of the other marketing methods, however modern they may be.

Personalization

One such benefit is personalization. Businesses can tailor emails to the customer actions, making each and every communication relevant to their interests.

Relationships Builder

Considering email marketing as SPAM would be the biggest mistake you may be making. When used well it can build trust and loyalty for your brand. In fact it is the best way to build relationships with your leads, prospects, existing customers, and even the past customers, since it puts you directly in touch with them.

Reach to Target Audience

Emails help you convey your message to your customers wherever they are, without invading their privacy. They can be used to achieve any goal, be it to drive traffic to your website, introduce new products/services, announce offers, or drive sales. To make your campaigns more effective, you could even use an email marketing software that lets you address your recipients by their names, segment audience into lists, and split topics for certain members of those lists.

Measurability

The measurability of emails cannot be ignored while talking about the benefits of email marketing. Using email marketing metrics you can find out how many of the recipients opened your email, how many unsubscribed, and how many clicked on the links that were sent. You can even do A/B testing to increase the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Convinced? Then let’s go through the following tips for effective email marketing:

Email Marketing Strategy Tips for 2018

1. Humanization to gain priority
   2018 is going to see a lot of one-to-one emails with each of them creating a feel as though they were written for the recipient. The content would be relevant to them as individuals.For this, you have to make a pre-plan strategy.

   For example, if you are running an online clothing store and you are asked to sign up for a newsletter, you can gather more details from your prospects, such as gender, age etc. so that based on those insights, you can personalize your emails to that prospect.

   See a reference image below:

   

   In addition, you can segment your email marketing list by demographic variables such as age and geographic location and send personalized emails to your prospects.

   You can also leverage dynamic content in your email marketing activity. That means you can create multiple versions of the same email that’s personalized for different sets of subscribers based on the information you have about them (like whether they’re male or female, their past purchase history, etc.)

2. Less is more in the world of Email Marketing
   From a casual study of the current trends, clear and concise email messages are going to replace the lengthy and detailed ones in 2018. Market watchers predict that customers would be very clear on what is expected of them and what they are supposed to do.
3. Email experience will soon be more interactive
   Many marketers would be seen braving new technologies to increase the interactivity of emails in 2018. The aim will be to boost click-through rates and conversion rates by making the content in emails as interactive as possible.In fact, you can now incorporate AMP story formats into your email messages of your g-mail account to make it rich, interactive and engaging experience for your mail recipients.

   There are several benefits associated with this innovation from Google, namely:

   • You can keep your email content up-to-date in real-time
   • Recipients can browse and interact with the content
   • Users can get more done in less time without having to leave the email

   Please check out this link for more details.

4. Transactional emails to turn more engaging
   With the open rates of transactional emails being eight times higher than the normal ones, efforts will be put in to make them more engaging so as to retain existing customers. Custom suggestions would be included to up-sell or cross-sell products/services to existing customers.For example, once the order is shipped to a customer, you can send an email of the shipped product, with a ‘thank you’ message to show you care about prompt delivery.

   After a week or so, you can shoot a reminder email to find out about the customer’s experience with your product. If he/she is happy, now would also be the right time to enter into the second stage of your relationship with your customer. Therefore, in the reminder email you can also show upsell or cross-sell (complementary) product on a discount rate in that email. By doing this, it helps to increase your ecommerce’s sell to some extent.

It is high time for marketers to start making attempts to own the entire journey of the customers instead of cherry-picking the touch points. If it is done in right way, email marketing seems to be the best to reach your target customer.

Therefore, go ahead and look for an email service that works for you. Craft an email message that is interesting, engaging, and compelling enough for your recipient to take the desired action. Revise and hit send!

Hiren Panchal

Director, Litmus Branding Pvt. Ltd.
Ahmedabad, India
Hiren Panchal co-founded Litmus with Kapil. Hiren owns an exhaustive character and sharpens his views with an analytical mindfulness. He observes every creative with a conscious magnifier. Just as his doer attitude wins over his believer attitude, his thought leadership aims at creating leaders and not followers on his team. His creative insights have created brands worldwide and he has been commanding in the industry for +20 years. Come to the point, he’s already there.