Electronic mail. When you write it like that, it seems downright archaic, doesn’t it? Since the earliest days of the Internet, email has maintained a continual presence. And, despite various attempts to eliminate and replace it (does anyone else remember Google Wave?), it continues to persist.
After all, how many of you reading this don’t have an email address?
From a marketing perspective, email continues to be a valuable tool. In fact, it’s experiencing something of a renaissance.
Here’s why we fell in love with email marketing… again… And why, perhaps, you should too.
A note on terminology
Before I dive deeper into the world of email marketing, I thought it would be best to clarify the terminology that will be used in this essay.
I’ll be using the terms email marketing, e-newsletters, and e-shots interchangeably.
If it arrives in your inbox, then it’s the subject of this article.
No matter what form an email takes, it’s the underlying format and concept that we’re big fans of.
The universality of email
If there’s such a thing as a universal language when it comes to digital marketing channels, it has to be email.
It doesn’t matter who you are emailing, where they are located, or what type of device they are using; you can be almost certain that they’re going to receive your email.
In a world of such vast complexities, such simplicity is refreshing.
Email also adds a degree of resilience to your digital marketing efforts that is unmatched by other channels.
Email is a reliable protocol, isn’t owned by any one company, and employs standards such as SMTP.
It’s also asynchronous, reliable, multimedia and will work across myriad devices.
Email is as close as we’ve come to being the open standard for communication in the digital age.
If you’re trying to communicate an offer or service, you cannot exclude email from your marketing channels.
Email converts!
Why do you send an email?
Unless you’re just screaming into the void, it’s because you want to induce someone to take an action.
You could be promoting an offer, inviting someone to attend an event, or even requesting feedback or a review. Whatever it is, email is about converting the receiver from being passive to active.
There’s a whole treasure trove of data that proves that email converts. So long as you are providing relevant offers, helpful content and targeting the right people, email marketing can be a money-making machine.
Still unsure whether email marketing is the right fit for your brand? Then consider the following points…
Email has a HUGE user base
Marketers are often quick to point to the vast numbers of people using social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X.
But, what’s often overlooked is the huge user base of email worldwide.
Think of it like this; email is so ubiquitous, so ingrained into our daily lives, that it has effectively become ‘invisible’. Sending emails is rather like breathing - we do it unconsciously. So, it’s somewhat inevitable that it gets overlooked as a marketing channel.
Don’t just take my word for it, though.
According to statistics platform Statista, there are currently 4.4 billion email users worldwide. And, this number is set to increase to 4.8 billion by 2027.
If you want to reach large numbers of people with your marketing efforts, then email should be part of your marketing mix.
Email users are active
How many emails do you send each day? We’re willing to bet it’s more than you can count on one hand.
For many people, this number exceeds the number of social media posts they make each day (apart from the ‘terminally online’, that is).
Email is also a channel that people check regularly - and it’s also a channel on which people are likely to have push notifications enabled.
To put email usage into perspective, research body Statista has claimed that in 2024 over 361 billion emails were sent.
That’s an enormous number. And, it’s a number which is expected to grow further. Statista estimates that by 2027 408 billion emails are going to be sent per annum.
If you want to use a popular marketing channel, put email at the top of your list.
Email provides a strong ROI
Measurement is a perennial challenge for marketers. If you’re going to invest in a marketing channel, you (and most importantly your boss/board of directors/investors) are going to expect a strong return on investment (ROI).
Handily, email marketing has a strong track record of delivering an excellent ROI.
A well-thought-out email marketing strategy can yield significant revenue for your brand. The Data & Marketing Association (DMA) conducted an in-depth piece of quantitative research in 2020 and found that for every £1 invested in email marketing, a return of £35.41 was generated.
Use the correct email platform, and you’ll have access to a wide variety of analytics, testing functionality, timezone and other segmentation options that will allow you to hone and refine your email marketing strategy over time to deliver increasingly better results. The same can’t always be said of other marketing channels…
Email ‘captures’ customers
Despite widespread claims of ‘email fatigue’ amongst many marketers, effective email marketing continues to deliver results. Researchers at Emarsys have found that 81% of small and medium-sized businesses use email marketing as their main customer acquisition channel, with 80% of these same businesses also using email as their main customer retention channel.
If you’re looking for a cost-effective way of gaining and retaining customers, email marketing delivers (if you’ll excuse the pun).
Email cultivates customers
With a solid email marketing strategy in place, you can cultivate a loyal customer base.
Indeed, even when recipients aren’t already customers, you can use email (in combination with high-quality content) to build an audience of fans for your brand.
These are fans who can, over time, be nudged towards making a purchase.
Statista’s email marketing research has found that 49% of customers would like to receive promotional emails from their favourite brands on a weekly basis. Note our emphasis on the word favourite.
Merely sending out emails in isolation won’t be effective. Instead, they must form part of a cohesive, omnichannel approach to customer acquisition and nurturing.
Looking beyond stats to real-world examples, publishers and media companies have taken note of the power of regular email campaigns to build an audience.
For example, the New York Times publishes approximately 50 different newsletters - which has helped the media business generate over 13 million paying subscribers.
Email also cultivates your most loyal fans/customers.
Why?
Because, not all subscriptions and follows are equal.
You should think about your digital connections with your customers as a form of hierarchy, with email at the top.
As Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute once put it:
“Email subscription is the most important type of relationship you can have with your subscriber, simply because we can control that connection the most.
Our fans on Facebook or followers on X should be viewed as they are - temporary subscription opportunities with whom we can try to build relationships.
These connections are controlled by Facebook and X, and the platforms do whatever they want with them. We’ve obviously seen the changes Facebook has made, and the millions that brands have lost by focusing too much on these types of connections. Tread lightly”.
Which brings us neatly to our next point…
Email gives you control
If you’re pouring money and effort into building a loyal customer base, it makes sense to do so on a platform that you control and own. As Pulizzi mentions above, brands have built significant audiences on third-party platforms only to see an algorithm or policy change see these efforts wiped out overnight.
If you concentrate your efforts on building a strong email list (first party data that you own) - you’re building an audience that you have much more control over. You can market on your terms rather than those of a Silicon Valley billionaire.
Should the worst happen and social media platforms disappear (at the swish of a regulator’s pen, for example), it is the brands that have cultivated a strong audience and plenty of first-party data that will be in the best position to survive and thrive.
Website remarketing
If you’re reading this, it’s likely you have a website/e-commerce store of your own.
Email marketing is a brilliantly effective way of drawing people back to your website time after time.
Provided you’ve got a well-thought-out strategy in place, have some attractive product offers, and you are producing high-quality content then you can use regular email campaigns to get people to visit your website on a regular basis (remember, retention is easier than acquisition!).
And, whilst they are on your website, you’re perfectly placed to pitch them your products.
At its core, email marketing can form the foundation of your owned media strategy. It allows you to build up an audience of returning readers - resulting in higher lifetime customer value and larger volumes of repeat sales.
Personalisation
Your inbox can be quite an intimate space. Think of the personal emails you’ve likely sent and received over your lifetime (job offers, appointments, personal messages etc).
If you’ve earned the trust of a customer/fan enough that they’ve given you their email address then you have a much stronger relationship than someone who has merely followed your Facebook page or X account.
This means that personalising your email efforts can have a big impact.
Let’s refer to the facts for a moment.
According to the Harvard Business Review, personalisation can lift email campaign revenues by 5-15% and increase the efficiency of marketing spend by up to 40%.
The team at Yes Lifecycle Marketing found that emails with personalised subject lines had a 50% higher open rate than those without.
Email provides you with the perfect opportunity to use personalisation within your digital marketing efforts. Due to the already strong relationship that you have engendered with subscribers, you’ll find personalisation has a commensurately large impact.
Automation/time saving
Time is money. The more time you have to pour into your marketing efforts, the more expensive they become (in terms of overall opportunity cost).
This brings us to one of the major benefits of email marketing; automation.
With platforms like Klaviyo, automating your email campaigns becomes easy, meaning you can effectively ‘schedule and forget’ and concentrate on other value added activities for your brand.
Email: the ultimate relationship builder
If you’ve not already implemented a comprehensive email marketing strategy, now is the time to do so.
Whilst email marketing may be viewed as an anachronism by some, it really isn’t. There’s a reason that email is still such a ubiquitous communications and marketing channel.
Before I sign off this article, I’d like to leave you with a relevant quote (whose provenance I can no longer remember):
“Create emails that are so compelling that people not only subscribe, but look forward to receiving and reading them”.
If you’d like to have a chat with some enthusiastic fans of email marketing we’d be happy to have a conversation!
