Is Email Marketing Still Effective?
In short, yes!
Back in the day, we looked forward to receiving emails but now it’s fair to say that we are warier of what’s popping into our inbox. This has led businesses to question whether email marketing is still an appropriate channel in their marketing mix. But, when done correctly, emails can still be a highly effective marketing tool and can drive incredible return on investment and should be considered by businesses of all sizes. Let’s check out some of the top reasons why email marketing is still relevant – even in 2022!
Everyone is checking their Emails
Despite the growth and popularity of instant messaging and other chat apps, emails have remained an integral part of our daily lives. Checking our emails comes just as naturally as checking our social media, so it’s no surprise that in 2020 the global amount of email users amounted to four billion. This staggering number is set to rise to over 4.6 billion by 2025 according to the Statista Research Department.
Let’s have a look at some impressive stats:
- In 2020, approximately 306 billion emails were sent and received every day worldwide and this figure is projected to increase to over 376 billion daily emails in 2025.
- Recent industry data shows that the trend towards mobile also holds true for email: in December 2018, 43% of email opens were via mobile.
- The iPhone email app was the most popular email client, accounting for 29% of email opens and Gmail was ranked second with a 27% open share.
- Gmail is a free email service owned by Google, and the company reported 1.5 billion active Gmail users worldwide in October 2018.
Email marketing is affordable and customisable
Email marketing is affordable for businesses of any size; many email platforms offer free services up to a certain number of emails or the size of the contact list. For example, MailChimp is free up to 2,000 contacts, and GridSend is free up to 100 emails per day. There are other free options such as SendInBlue and MailJet. If you need something that works a bit harder, there are many reasonably priced options available, or outsourcing to a company that specialises in email marketing could work for you.
Emails can also offer an incredible ROI; according to Litmus, the average email returns $36 for every $1 spent, which is a 3600% ROI. This is better than any other marketing channel.
Personalisation of emails is becoming increasingly important, as we give more personal information to companies and brands, we are expecting them to use this to send us custom and personalised content that is relevant to us or our shopping habits. Simple copy and paste emails or emails with incorrect information will instantly turn customers away. This could result in the deletion of the email, unsubscribing from the contact list, or decreasing the likelihood of the customer shopping with that brand again.
Personalisation done right can have several statistically-proven benefits such as:
- Birthday emails are capable of generating roughly 342% more revenue per email than a regular promotional email.
- Personalised messages have an ROI of 122%.
- Personalised subject lines can generate approximately 50% higher open rates than standard subject lines.
GDPR has positively impacted email marketing
The new GDPR regulations came into effect on May 25th 2018 and some email marketers were concerned that these tighter privacy laws meant that their email marketing efforts wouldn’t be as effective, or that they wouldn’t be able to continue email marketing at all.
Thankfully, that wasn’t the case! Anti-spam regulations have been around for a long time and the result is that brands have been forced to streamline email marketing best practices. In fact, 56% of marketers feel positive about the impact GDPR is having on their email marketing according to the UK DMA Email Marketer Tracker.
Since GDPR, 41% of email marketers saw a decrease in opt-out rates and 55% reported a decrease in spam complaints. Marketers have argued that it has refined their subscriber lists and in turn, 75% have said they’ve seen an increase in their open and click-through rates. GDPR has helped both consumers and businesses; consumers are no longer being bombarded by every brand under the sun, and businesses can directly reach people who have a genuine interest in their brand. It’s a win-win!
The future of email marketing
It’s fair to say that COVID-19 turned email marketing on its head. Many people believed that emails were a dying method of communication pre-pandemic, but as many companies were forced to diversify and move to more online methods of promoting their business, email marketing saw a new lease of life.
Globally, open rates increased by an average of 4.7% from February to April 2020. The “Stay-at-home” orders around the world forced many businesses without a digital presence to quickly create one, and people who had never shopped online before did so for the first time. Email quickly became the best way for companies to communicate directly with their customers and as a result, email revenue went up significantly, especially in e-commerce.
Moving into 2022, we’re going to see new strategies play out with a focus on “people first.” Companies will become more empathetic which will lead to stronger customer-brand relationships; email marketing is the perfect marketing channel for this kind of relationship-building. If you’re not yet convinced by the power of emails, just check out this list of Email Marketing stats!
If you’d like to add emails to your marketing mix or you’re just looking to improve upon your current strategy, then check out our Email Marketing Service to see how we could help you!