There are many marketing methods in the world of Internet marketing. One of the most effective is email marketing. In this article, we’ll discuss email marketing and see why you should be using it in your marketing efforts.

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing refers to the act of sending your message through email with the purpose of building a relationship with customers. It’s anything that’s meant to build your business, increase brand awareness, and build customer loyalty and trust. The emails are sent as either direct email or as a transactional email.

Direct Email

Direct emails have the purpose of informing about a promotion. This includes sending emails such as advertisements, special offers, news about sales, news about products, sharing third-party ads, etc. They have around a 25% open rate.

These types of emails are sent to those who have signed up to receive them which often includes previous or current customers, anyone who signed up with the purpose of receive updates, anyone who signed-up to receive your opt-in gift, etc. They’ve given you permission to email them with offers.

Transactional Email

Transactional emails are sent based on a triggered action. These are transactional and relational messages with the purpose of facilitating, completing, or confirming a transaction. These include purchase confirmation, order status, receipts, abandoned carts, password resets, download links, etc. They have up to an 85% open rate.

The main purpose of these emails is to convey the information about what triggered them, but since they have a high open rate they’re also used for cross-sells and up-sells. They sometimes include coupons, special offers, etc. Some email vendors allow you to tailor these offers based on the transaction.

Reasons to Use Email Marketing

Email is still the number 1 communication channel. In the US alone, more than 85% of adults and 78% of teenagers use email, with 99% checking it every day- and usually multiple times per day. That’s a staggering number of potential users that are waiting for your email.

Email has a high conversion rate. People that buy products through email marketing spend up to 138% more than buyers who didn’t receive the email.

Email marketing is relatively inexpensive when compared to other marketing efforts. It’s much cheaper than regular mail because you don’t have to print physical materials and pay to ship them. The ROI (Return on Investment) for email marketing can be as high as 3800%.

The average email marketing sale outperforms social media marketing by at least 3x.

44% of consumers search through email before making a purchase, while only 4% check social platforms such as Facebook.

Email belongs to the consumer and they will have the email until they delete it. They won’t lose it if they scroll past it.

Email is searchable and sortable. It’s difficult to search social media and even more difficult to sort it. Email allows you to create your own folders, flag emails, search them, etc. Email is a better choice for a consumer that wants to search for an ad from a specific brand to find information about a sale or a coupon code.

Sending the email is handled by an email service, so all you need to do is create the email and send it once and it can be received by hundreds, thousands, or even millions of readers.

Email services include analytics, so you can know how many readers open the email. This helps you understand consumer behavior for your market. You can even perform a/b testing so you can improve your marketing efforts.

It provides an excellent marketing opportunity because they’re expecting to see emails from you. You’ll have a list of emails you can send to that you already know are interested in your products or services. It can turn prospects into customers, and it can turn casual buyers into devoted fans.

You own the list and you can interact with the list any time you want. Rather than a social network that owns the space and has full control over who sees your marketing efforts, and even charges for your marketing efforts, everyone on your list can see your marketing campaigns without restrictions.

Disadvantages of Using Email for Marketing

There are a few disadvantages of using email for marketing, but even with those disadvantages, it’s easy to see that email marketing is worth the effort. These disadvantages actually open up some opportunities to improve your emails.

53% of consumers say they receive too many emails from brands that are not relevant. If they think the email isn’t relevant they’re more likely to report the email as spam, send it to the spam folder, or unsubscribe from the email list.

17.3% of emails are classified as spam. This is a lot of emails that don’t even make it to the inbox. Many of us, I know this is true for me, almost never check the spam folder. I might check mine a few times per year when I think of it. I’ve found emails from some prominent WordPress companies in my spam folder.

Consumers tend to receive a lot of emails per day, making it easier for an email to go unnoticed.

Creating the content for a successful email campaign takes time and creativity. This can be difficult for many marketers.

We have to ensure that we’re not violating any spam laws for the countries we’re sending emails to.

Email should be opt-in, meaning they’ve chosen to receive emails from you. This is permission marketing. In other words, we can’t just send our emails to anyone we want. We have to put forth the effort to build our email list.

Ending Thoughts

Even with the relatively few disadvantages of email marketing, it’s easy to see why it should be the highest on your list of marketing efforts. The cost of running email campaigns is low and the ROI can be outstanding. Email is popular. It’s been around for many decades and it’s here to stay. This makes email an excellent platform for investing your marketing dollars.

Do you use email marketing? Let us know what you think about it in the comments.