The Importance of Email Marketing in 2021

“Email marketing is dead” — a popular article headline over the years, but one that is losing power as time goes on. For those who have written off email marketing, we urge you to reconsider it for the sake of your marketing strategy in 2021. If somebody tells you that email marketing is dead, know that this is just an opinion (and an outdated, to say the least!).

Benefits of Email Marketing

Here is a list of reasons why email marketing is still important in 2021!

Owned Audience

First and foremost, if the Apple iOS 14 update has taught us anything, it’s that a change from a Big Tech company can completely turn our marketing strategy upside-down. One change from Apple has caused Facebook to come out fighting.

If you’ve missed all the headlines, the iOS 14 update contains App Tracing Transparency, a system whereby all apps on the App Store need to ask permission from consumers before tracking activity and behavior. All Apple users will now have the option to allow or reject tracking when they open an app for the first time after updating their device.

Read more: How to Work Around and Keep Facebook Lookalike and Audiences Up to Date

With reduced access to data, the industry has serious concerns right now about the efficacy of social media advertising, especially on Facebook. Either way, you can alleviate all risks and work on your email list instead.

When focusing on Google Ads targeting or Facebook Custom Audiences, you’re essentially building an audience on rented territory. What if Google starts restricting targeting, too? What if Facebook decides that the Custom Audiences feature is no longer a viable feature on the platform? What if a huge Apple update comes and destroys everything that we know about Facebook targeting and data collection?

With email marketing, you own the database of customers. These are your customers, your leads, and nothing can affect it. This is a first-party list collected by the business and cared for by the business. As long as they haven’t unsubscribed, you can reach out to these people whenever you need.

There are ways around the iOS update with regards to Facebook advertising, including automated AI optimization tools and conversion data, but you can also escape the current tension by building your OWN list of leads and customers with email marketing.

Strong Results

Marketing is all about results, and the fact that email marketing doesn’t generate any is simply a misconception. Over the last ten years, research suggests that email marketing actually has the best ROI of all marketing channels. Here are some important stats:

• Emails are more effective than Tweets at generating clicks
• Some businesses earn up to $44 from each dollar spent
• Email marketing is 40 times more effective than social media in terms of customer acquisition

Later, we’ll finish our guide with some tips to help you get started (and enjoy the success suggested here!).

Encourage Action

With emails, it’s easier to encourage action in those that have shown an interest in the brand or a specific product. For example, you might send an email with a video tutorial or a customer review. If you’re to do this, the single feature that could transform a failing campaign into a success is a CTA at the bottom.

There are thousands of tactics out there to encourage clicks and action, so you just need to find the one that works for you. Perhaps you’ll offer a limited-time discount for those who click through?

If you choose to encourage action, remember to create a specific landing page for the CTA (nobody wants to go through to a homepage!). Additionally, use contrasting colors and ensure that the button stands out.

Enjoy Customer Retention and Engagement

If you have an email address on your list, it means that the customer has given permission to be contacted by the brand. Therefore, they expect contact from you. As long as you aren’t too pushy, you can engage customers and improve customer retention.

The (not so) secret is to provide value with any email you send — all it takes is one bad, irrelevant email and the customer will click ‘Unsubscribe’ before you can say ‘please buy from us’.

Think about your business from an objective point of view; what does the customer need and want? Common solutions come in the shape of product reviews and tutorials, interactive content, FAQs, and product tips.

Remember, the subject line is just as important as the email itself. Often, businesses spend hours compiling the perfect email and then ruin the whole campaign with a poor subject line, the detail that’s supposed to draw people in.

One top tip for a subject line is to ask a question or pique curiosity in another way. If you can intrigue the recipient, they’re more likely to open the email and half the work is done.

Tailored Content

Another reason to get involved in email marketing this year is that it allows you to personalize content for the audience in question. Unfortunately, generic and boring email blasts no longer work. You can’t send the exact same content to all customers and hope for success. Instead, learn about customers based on their interests, shopping journey, and other metrics.

With email automation tools, you can also send the right content depending on where they are in the sales funnel. Do you need to generate brand awareness or is the customer ready to purchase? Do you need to send a product tutorial or a discount offer?

One simple way to send tailored emails is to base it on their own actions. For example, abandoned cart emails and welcome emails when people first offer their address.

Website Traffic

An email list is also a good way to get people clicking on your website. As much as we like to think they might, customers don’t click onto our websites every day to keep up with blog posts and other content. However, you can send small reminders through email to share what they’ve been missing.

For example, why not send a summary of the best content over the past week or month? If you’re producing solid content, it should catch attention and they could click through to satisfy their content cravings.

Other Benefits

In case this wasn’t enough, it’s easy to integrate emails with your social channels and other marketing strategies. Also, you generate brand awareness and stay in the minds of leads and customers. As you keep an eye on what works and what doesn’t, you’ll adjust your strategy and do what it takes to encourage clicks (and revenue!).

Succeeding with Email Marketing

We’ve been waxing lyrical about email marketing, but how do you make the most of the marketing technique? To finish, we’ve compiled some of the biggest trends from 2021 and you can apply these to your strategy!

Personalization

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, and we’ve mentioned it in this guide, but personalization often differentiates the brilliant from the distinctly average. Whether you use AI systems or do everything manually, it’s important to personalize and cater to the needs of the customer.

Think about segmentation, sending emails at the right times, using dynamic content, and always putting the recipient first.

Mobile

Again, this isn’t a surprising suggestion, but you need to remember that a significant percentage of people check their emails and browse using a mobile device. If your emails aren’t optimized for a smaller screen, people will not only ignore your email, but they’ll also think about clicking the dreaded unsubscribe button.

No matter how much you’ve tried to hide from the fact, more people now use mobile phones to browse than desktop computers and laptops. People check their emails while commuting, sitting in waiting rooms, and even in the bath. Therefore, you need to accommodate them.

Customer Appreciation

In 2021, customers have been through a terrible time with the pandemic. For many, they just want to feel good, and this is something you can achieve with appreciation emails. A basic example is a birthday email — Experian recently claimed that 342% more revenue comes from birthday emails than the second-most successful promotional email.

As a business, you need to put customers in the middle of everything you do. Praise customers, reward them for hard work, and put them in the spotlight. Include them in newsletters, become a part of the community, and create a strong bond with the people that keep the business going.

Bonus Tips

• Link your social media channels in all emails
• Use animations, GIFs, and other interactive and entertaining features
• Automate wherever possible to save time and resources
• Take advantage of the fact that millions of people are still working from home (photograph products around the home and use it within content)

The importance of email marketing in 2021 is stronger than ever, so why not jump on the wave?