There have been many developments in the digital marketing world and yet we see that e-mail marketing continues to be one of the strong and reliable channels. In fact, email marketing is a go-to marketing channel for many marketers because its results can be measured and deliver the best marketing ROI. But there’s no doubt that email marketing has changed over the years from identical emails to all prospects to sending data-driven and personalised emails to different customer groups.

Although you may not be sure about the effectiveness of e-mail marketing you probably can think of some companies whose emails you look forward to receiving and enjoy reading. There might be some customers with short lifetime values who will make just one purchase from your company but there will still be new and returning customers who want to hear from you engage with your campaigns. 

Also, many customers check their emails on their mobile phones more often than they use social media apps or do web browsing. It’s proven to be 40x more effective at acquiring new customers than social media channels. 

Here is how email marketing works and why having an email marketing strategy is crucial in 2020:

Email marketing gives you direct access to your customers and helps your brand stay on top of their minds whenever they are ready to make a purchase. Your audience gives out their information for a reason and as a business using email marketing gives you a great tool to build a relationship with them when used right. 

Email marketing can be used to both improve existing relationships and foster new ones by providing relevant and valuable information. So businesses need to be aware of the fact that email marketing is about their customer and not about their company. By keeping the customer in the focus of their strategy, they can build emails that their customers will look forward to receiving. 

Source: Campaign Monitor

A few reasons why email marketing still works so well for both businesses and customers:

Consumers prefer it:

Customers prefer to be communicated through email most probably because they give permission for it in the first place. They are interested to learn more about your brand and products so they sign up to your newsletter to get updates from you.

Studies have shown that consumers prefer email marketing over Facebook marketing and 72% of people prefer to receive promotional content by email, compared to 17%  who favor social media channels such as Facebook.

It’s cost-effective: 

Email marketing is chosen by many marketers because it’s cost-effective. Building an email marketing strategy requires a very little investment to get started and can easily be incorporated into your marketing plan without adding any extra costs. It allows businesses to generate revenue and profit without making them spend any money. The ROI can be very high for many businesses and research shows email marketing generates $38 for every $1 spent.

Gives a broader reach:

While social media is a popular tool for many businesses to reach their audience, they can’t always get the organic reach they want. However, email marketing provides a better reach as research shows a brand message is 5x more likely to be seen via an email than via Facebook message or post. 

Also, each marketing activity can be promoted using email marketing such as launch of a new product or a new blog to drive traffic to the website. And then by using retargeting ads businesses can continue to reach their subscribers. 

It can be personalised:

As today’s customers are exposed to so many marketing messages, they are more likely to respond to the ones that are personalised for them. 

Using email marketing, brands can personalise their messages and their content according to the preferences and behavioural data of their subscribers. Marketing automation tools enable customer segmenting to deliver relevant content to the right subscriber. Sending personalised emails is a great way to attract new customers while also nurturing existing ones with content they would find helpful and engaging. 

Conclusion

A successful digital marketing strategy will increase website traffic along with brand awareness while bringing more revenue. To accomplish, businesses can use different types of tools and activities such as blog content, social media and online ads. However, the main element that brings all of these together in a way that makes sense for the customer journey without a doubt is email marketing. 

If you need help building an efficient email marketing strategy that will boost your digital marketing efforts, get in touch with us. 

About the Author

Hande is a multi-award-winning entrepreneur, Principal of WSI London, founder of Quattro Business Consulting, co-founder of Think Neuro and Buddy Performance. She is independent Board Member in verous companies and institutions. She has studied Industrial Engineering, has worked with 200 clients from different parts of the world and she has 20 years of consulting experience.