Ever since digital marketing’s phenomenal rise during last one decade, email marketing has been one of its foundational pillars. Although in last few years obituaries have been written about its imminent death, it has shown surprising resilience. Even today email marketing continues to enjoy immense popularity as brands and digital marketers alike find great and undeniable value in it. In this latest blog post though we’ll be looking at the upside as well as downside of email marketing.
If you’re utterly confused whether sending marketing emails will help your business to grow or not then this blogpost will give much needed clarity to you.
Advantages of Email Marketing
Cost effective: Email Marketing is certainly one of the most affordable marketing platforms, not only compared to traditional media but also other forms of digital marketing. In the case of latter, Email marketing incurs only fraction of cost as compared to search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM).
Unlike SEO where you need to bear the cost of hiring a dedicated team, sending marketing emails isn’t a labour-intensive task. When compared with PPC or SEM where the burden of bearing the cost of monthly ad campaign is imminent, it does not put any such burden.
Great ROI: Beyond being cost-effective, email marketing is just as good when it comes to delivering ROI or return-on-investment. According to a rough estimate, the average ROI for email marketing is impressive 36% for every $1 spent. This means that brands can fetch a whopping 3600% return on their investment. However, one must take this fact with an important caveat. The caveat being that many a times the average ROI differs from industry-to-industry and also due to other critical factors.
Factors affecting Email Marketing ROI
- Email list quality
- Campaign relevance
- Email design and user experience
- Call-to-Action (CTA)
- A/B Testing
There is still no disputing that the average ROI of email marketing is pretty impressive, which is exactly why it is still holding on to its popularity. Here are some interesting statistics clearly highlighting email marketing’s sustained prominence among the marketers.
Nearly 30% marketers cite email marketing having the highest ROI among all the digital marketing channels.
59% marketers claim email is as twice effective in generating leads than any other platform.
Measuring and tracking performance: Just like PPC and social media marketing, email marketing also allows you to track and measure its performance. This helps the marketers in making informed decisions when it comes to optimizing their campaigns.
Marketers can track following metrics to gain deeper insight into their email marketing campaign:
- Open Rate: This shows percentage of recipients who have actually opened your email.
- Click Through Rate: Number or percentage of recipients who click on a link placed in your email.
- Conversion Rate: Percentage of recipients or email receivers who perform a desired action (e.g. purchase, sign up)
Permission based marketing: Email marketing is actually a permission-based marketing, which basically implies that you’re reaching out to people who have permitted to receive emails from you; decisively filtering out people who are least interested in knowing about your products or services. This in-turn increases the chances of higher engagement rates and better ROI.
Effortless and easy to implement: Today many email marketing platforms and software offers lots of customization and automation features, allowing you to optimize your campaign without any efforts whatsoever. In fact, it won’t be an exaggeration to claim that today implementing an email marketing campaign is as simple as walk-in-the-park thing.
With simple drag and drop customization feature, you can easily change the theme and UX design of your campaign, change the text, insert any video or image in your campaign. Automation feature, on other hand, allows you to implement any function or changes in your campaign setting with only few clicks.
Direct and personalized communication: One of the USPs of email is that it is one of the most personalized ways of communication. When you send a marketing email to your potential customer, the communication is only between you and your potential customer; no distractions and no interference whatsoever. This allows marketers and brands to tailor a personalized message that can emotionally resonate with their target audience, leading to likelihood of more qualified leads and conversion.
Now if you compare this with other digital marketing channels like SEO and social media marketing then it hardly offers any scope of personalized communication.
Disadvantages of Email marketing
Now let us shift our focus on other side, which deals with the shortcomings of email marketing and due to which your marketing campaign may not yield desirable results.
Spam issues: One of the biggest shortcomings is that there is always the imminent risk that your emails may not be able to bypass the spam filter. Although this problem can be fixed somewhat by following email best practices, the possibility of your emails getting stuck in spam folders still cannot be ruled out outrightly.
Overcrowded inboxes: Even if your emails manage to bypass the spam folder it still faces the challenge of jostling for attention in highly overcrowded inbox. Today most people receive high volumes of email every day and therefore the probability that your email may get lost in the deluge of emails are pretty high.
Security risk: Over the years hacking groups around the world have heavily relied on emails to conduct sophisticated hacking attacks, making emails highly suspectable to security risks. Even though this doesn’t necessarily make email marketing a risky affair, it does put a burden on marketers and brands alike to ensure that all the safety protocols are put in place.
Ethical pressures: While ensuring data security is critical, there is also the ethical pressure to exercise highest data privacy practices. When people willingly give their email ids, they expect that their emails won’t be shared with any third-party companies or used for any other activities without seeking their proper consent.
Declining open rates: There is always the risk that issues like spam filters and overcrowded inbox can cause your open rates to decline. Hence you will face the constant pressure of overcoming this pestering issue by creating compelling subject line and optimizing the content.
Best practices for high-performing & successful Email marketing campaign
Practicing the below mentioned practices will not only ensure that your mails won’t be flagged as spam but can also increase your ROI
- Create a high-quality email list: Don’t get over-obsessed with numbers and quantity, focus on quality too. Try acquiring subscribers who are truly interested in knowing about your products and services.
- Create engaging content: Try to create content that is informative, helpful and at the same time keeps them engaged. Be concise and brief. Don’t use too many jargons or fancy vocabularies.
- Focus on email design: Visually appealing emails have a great chance of achieving higher ROI. Therefore, make sure that your emails are visually appealing. Equally important is to make sure that your mails are properly optimized for mobile viewing. Nearly 47% of people open their mails on their smartphones.
- Compelling Call-to-Action (CTA): Engaging and compelling CTAs can increase the chances of your conversion.
Popular Email Marketing Tools
As you may have already guessed that email marketing is much more than just sending bland marketing emails. It involves multiple steps and a time-consuming process. However, with scores of tools and software available in the market, this should be your least concern.
These tools streamline and simplifies the entire process, saving you enormous time and effort.
PRchitects: Most trusted and reliable digital marketing partner
Before we conclude this article, here is a brief introduction about PRchitects. PRchitects is a full-service digital and influencer marketing agency with over 10 years of experience in industry. Counting successful clients ranging from emerging unicorns to legacy companies, we’ve stamped our authority in building brands through viral influencer marketing and social media marketing campaigns.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, Email marketing surely stands as one of the competent tools in digital marketing’s toolkit. By harnessing its advantages, you have great chance of increasing your conversion. However, it is not without its pitfalls including the imminent risk of being perceived as spam. By carefully evaluating the all the upsides and downsides, you can create email marketing strategies that is more likely to succeed than fail. Your success will also as much depend on your commitment to follow best email marketing practices.