So, what’s so special about Email Marketing?
Email marketing can be annoying — but it can be highly effective as well. Although most of us probably don’t consciously think about email marketing everyday, I would say 99% of people reading this blog have already come into contact with some form of a promotional email today. These messages can take various forms — some more obvious than others.
So, what exactly is email marketing? We all know vaguely what this can mean, but I must confess, I did not know the actual definition until I looked it up. According to Mailchimp, it can be defined as “the use of email within your marketing efforts to promote a business’ products and services, as well as incentivize customer loyalty.” All good stuff here — promo and customer loyalty all in one! Additionally, email marketing allows each business to communicate when and what they want, but more importantly how they want to speak with their consumer. Really, it’s a mean of an ongoing conversation with someone who is a potential customer, past customer, or current customer.
So what am I getting at here? Email marketing is without a doubt one of the most effective ways to market a business. For one, according to Statista, half of the world has an active email account — going from 3.9 billion in 2019 to currently in 2021 at 4.1 billion. The reach you can get with email is seems virtually unlimited. It’s also an easy way to continue with brand awareness. Businesses can send weekly, and even daily emails as a reminder of their brand, and ultimately to stay fresh in the minds of their consumers.
Financially, email marketing will cost you little to nothing, making this easily the most effective and costly way to advertise — so much reach, for the price of nothing, essentially. It also doesn’t discriminate by demographics such as age, income etc — even the least digitally competent. According to Neilson DMA, in 2019, for every $1 dollar spent on email advertising, the return was $42. With an ROI like that, its obviously a no-brainer that email marketing is a must!
Although email marketing does play a significant role in the acquisition of new customers, other platforms like social media are extremely important as well. However, when it comes to retention rate, email marketing has proven one of, if not, the most effective in maintaining existing customer relationships. According to a study conducted by Emarsys, 80% of small/medium businesses rely on email for their customer retention.
So, overall, in a world that seems dominated by social media anymore, it seems hard to believe that something as simple as email can help to make or break a business. Email is just as important as ever — and a great way to remind consumers of your brand, for a very friendly price tag!
