As a marketer, you might’ve heard colleagues talking around the watercooler about how email marketing is dead. For many marketing departments, it has been a common concern.

I’m here to assure you that email marketing is still effective, so there’s no need to worry. It’s still one the most reliable channels for digital marketers and online entrepreneurs. 

But, why does it still reign supreme, where it’s the oldest form of digital communication?

We are on it and this article will discuss how email marketing is still important for your business. And after that, some of the best practices of email marketing are at the end of it.

Importance of email marketing for your business

Maybe it is one of the oldest forms of digital communication, but email still reigns supreme when it comes to usage. It is ruling over the marketing channels because of some fascinating advantages.

Let’s get to them right away!

Opportunity to get started for free

Email marketing has become a cornerstone of digital marketing because you can get started with it for free with reasonable limits for reaching customers. 

Even with the free version of some tools, you can easily carry on your small business. And with the premium one, it’s limitless. Just Grow your email list know their interests, Segment them and start emailing.

There are a few crucial factors to take into account when selecting the best free service:

• Check to see if they offer you limitless email campaigns or not.
• Check your emailing limit for subscribers.
• View the features offered in the free version/trial.

Getting a free service doesn’t mean it’s a bad service, just a little bit restricted (regarding time or email sending). Before deciding on your tool, you must consider what happens when you outstrip the free plan.

Cost efficiency

Paid campaigns, PPC advertisements, and social media ads can cost a lot of money before you start seeing results. On the other hand, SEO takes time.

Email marketing offers you to build an audience right from the start. You can reach out to your audience and regularly engage at a minimal cost. While most platforms are free to start, you can keep it ongoing at a minimal cost.

That explains why email marketing has a high ROI(as much as 4200%). When you pay less, the ROI generally tends to be higher. Thus, it’s the most cost-effective marketing channel of all.

Audience building capability

Even the best email content in the world is useless without an audience to receive it. Building audiences is the initial goal for any business. It can be a highly effective way to build an audience for your brand.

Use forms and newsletters in emails that can help you make an audience for your brand. Subsequently, you can build credibility by staying in contact with your customers and keeping them up to date about your business.

91% of people check their email every single day. Emails have a chance of getting seen at the exact time. 

Increases Website Traffic

86% of marketers say they look at email engagement metrics such as click-through rates and downloads to determine how fruitful a piece of content is. Which is more than website traffic and social media analytics. 

Growing website traffic is not a piece of cake when billions of websites have the same niche across the internet. With email campaigns, you can get customers to engage with the content on your blog or website by adding related links to your website within the content of your email.

Building credibility for your business

Frequently, email newsletters are deleted or, worse yet, marked as spam. One of the difficult tasks for a business is to establish credibility and maintain positive customer relationships. People buy from brands they trust, and it is hard to get these days. 

“Love at first sight” in business these days is uncommon, just like in personal relationships. Generally speaking, developing customer confidence in your offerings takes time. 

When you meet your customers’ expectations and are pertinent to your offerings, email is the ideal platform for establishing credibility. It helps you strengthen the relationship you want to develop with your subscriber base.

Targeted customer communication

Email personalization based on gender, race, and ethnicity is practiced by 20% of retail, e-commerce, and consumer goods and services businesses. Compared to 38% in 2019, 60% of retail, e-commerce, and consumer goods and services businesses are personalizing emails based on past purchases. (Source: Hubspot)

You can’t control who sees your content in a newspaper or television advertisement. With emails, you can send subscribers specifically tailored emails based on their interests and turn them into paying customers. 

Additionally, you can personalize emails for each client. However, you can segment your email list using different groups based on location, demographics, lead status, and other information.

Boost product sales

If you’re one of the 81% of business owners who use email marketing as part of their digital marketing strategy, you may already be enjoying the advantages of doing so. 

Do you know there are three times as many email addresses as the Facebook and Twitter accounts? In addition, email has a click-through rate that is six times higher than Twitter.  

Email is one of the most effective marketing channels for contacting your target market. By doing this, businesses can fully connect with their customers, stand out from the crowd, increase conversion rates, and boost sales.

Email marketing automation

75% of businesses use email marketing because of its marketing automation features. Sales productivity rises by 14.5% as a result of marketing automation. Additionally, it results in a 12.2% decrease in market overhead. 

The hassle of crafting and sending new emails each time a customer expresses interest in a brand, a customer needs something new, a business announces a sale, and so forth is nowadays avoided by marketers who automate their emails.

Making promotional campaigns an automated process is the main goal of email marketing automation. Automate your emails, put your emails on autopilot, and see exponential growth for your brand.

Access to actionable data and reports

Email campaign results are quantifiable. Fewer metrics and facts are available for counting. Estimating the return on investment from marketing in a medium like TV. You hardly get anything from social media.

Email marketing performance evaluation is easy to do. For maximum conversion, personalize your emails using softwares, which displays all the relevant metrics, including open rates, click rate, click-through rates, unsubscribes rates, bounces, revenue, etc.

Due to the instantaneous nature of data collection, analysis can be completed more quickly. With other forms of promotion, you have to gather a lot of data before assessing how successful the campaign was. 

Rather than relying on a company or doing the calculations yourself, you can update your email strategy accordingly. With this access to actionable data and reports, you can easily plan your next moves, such as upsells, cross-sales, or an offer.

Email marketing best practices: 6 keys to success

Email marketing success is not a turkey shot to accomplish. But there are some best practices to implement the full potential of email platforms. 

Here we discuss the six keys to successful email marketing. That will not make the process a piece of cake, but those keys can ensure your emails are more fruitful than ever. 

So, here we go,

Build an email list

Treating your email list like your most valuable marketing asset is the backbone of any successful program. That’s why a smart list-building strategy is crucial to your success.

Don’t ask for too much information upfront on your signup form, which is another crucial thing to keep in mind. Define who your potential is and go right through their interests. It’s pretty scary that, The average email list churns by about 30% yearly.

So the facts are,

1. When it comes to your subscribers, prioritize quality over quantity.
2. Ask fewer questions and focus on what’s most important to you.
3. Take action to avoid the natural churning of your list.

Segment your email list

Batch and blast emails are a thing of the past. Sending the same offer to every customer in your database is no longer good enough. The secret to effective email marketing is email list segmentation because of this. 

List segmentation is exactly what it sounds like—the process of breaking up an email list into several smaller, more targeted lists. List segmentation aims to provide your clients and prospects with a more specialized marketing experience.

There are several ways to segment an email list, and what works for one business may not be suitable for another. So, before you begin, it’s crucial to think about your buyer personas and the traits that make them unique. 

Therefore, We can say that,

1. Know your audiences and segment them as their interests.

2. Targeted emails for the targeted list can give a more personalized marketing experience.

3. Defining buyer persona with more efficiency.

Analyze your data to know the customers

Know your customers and know their intents. Here comes the need for data analysis. 

Set your goals for the campaign. Let your marketing tool collect leads for you. Analyze all the data and define intent. Only that strategy can put your data work for itself.

So, the lessons are,

1. Prioritise your data analysis.

2. Go beyond opens and clicks and focus on the goal of your campaign.

2. Integrate your marketing channels to get a brief profile of each subscriber.

Send personalized emails

Personalized content is important to 86% of consumers when making purchases. Concentrate on your data analysis, understand your customers’ interests, and start personalizing your emails, so they feel like 1:1 communication. 

But be careful not to overdo it. Just because you can personalize based on multiple data points does not mean you should. If there is no justifiable reason to personalize, it comes off as condescending or annoying at best and downright creepy at worst.

Consequently, we discovered here, 

1. Adding the first name is only one aspect of personalization.
2. Utilize your data to give your emails a genuine 1:1 feel.
3. Do not cross the line into creepy territory. 

Engage with customers regularly

Marketing metrics say the probability of selling to a new prospect is between 5% and 20%. And there is a 60-70% probability of selling to an existing customer.

So your sale points are your old customers. That’s why customer engagement matters the most when driving more sales. Engage your customers by republishing, repurposing, and all the possible ways you can think.

So, here we get, 

1. Attract new customers but prioritize engaging existing ones.
2. Reform your content to keep your subscribers engaged.
3. Maintaining consistent relationships with customers can boost sales.

Automate regular emails

Statistics say that, Businesses that use marketing automation experience as much as 451% increase in qualified leads. And, 63% of companies outgrowing their competitors use marketing automation.  

Marketers are competitive people by nature. They want to outperform the competition, and automation is one way you can do it.

Lastly, the tips are,

1. Your automation helps to personalize and engage at scale.
2. Start with a welcome sequel and end with a win-back campaign.
3. Any subscriber activity you are tracking can be used to automate.

Ensure email deliverability

The first thing to success is ensuring your emails are making it to the inbox. Email marketing tools can help you with that. 

A catchy subject line does the half work. According to the subject lines, 69% of email recipients flag messages as spam.

According to Gmail, if someone receives your brand’s email in their “Inbox” tab rather than their “Promotions” tab, they are more likely to click the spam button.

There are some other issues like can spam acts, domain reputation, and a lot more. That’s why you need to know why emails go to spam and how to prevent it.

So, the moral of the story is,

1. Get permission from the receiver before you send an email.
2. Set your goal, state it to the customers but make it concise. 
3. No compromise with product relevance.

Summary

Email Marketing is important for your business because of its invaluable returns. Not only with ROI, but it also returns with many other benefits. So, it is one of the best ways a business can grow and excel. 

It’s more convenient, dependable, adaptable, and affordable than other online marketing channels. Because of this, four of five marketers said they preferred to give up social media to email marketing. 

Therefore, If you aren’t using emails for marketing, it’s time to use their full potential.

Signing off for now, but if you want to add your thoughts, don’t forget to comment below.

---