The Importance of Email Marketing in a Digital World

Compared to the latest digital marketing crazes, such as artificial intelligence, influencer partnerships, and video content – email marketing doesn’t feel that trendy, relevant, or efficient anymore.

 

Furthermore, many business owners and marketers have been, confidently, for years, declaring that email marketing is dead.

 

Yet, email marketing is very much alive and, as a digital marketing tool, continues to exceed its performance year after year. According to research by Campaign Monitor, email marketing generates $38 in ROI for every $1 spent.

 

So, email marketing isn’t dead – in fact, it’s one of the most effective ways to reach and engage your target audience. However, it’s important to remember that some of its practices, including GDPR violations and poor user experience, are dead – and using them ensures your email marketing efforts fail.

 

In this article, we discuss why email marketing is still relevant today in the digital world.

 

#1 Email Marketing Generates Great ROI

 

As mentioned earlier, email marketing makes money. An average return for every $1 spent is $36 – nearly a double higher return than you can expect from the second-most cost-effective form of marketing – SEO.

 

In addition, display ads and keyword ads on Google yield an average ROI of between $15 and $17.

 

Email marketing owes its amazing ROI results to the low setup costs. In general, setting up an email marketing campaign doesn’t require substantial investments. You’ll need someone to help you create email content and leverage an email marketing automation service.

 

In comparison to buying ad space or paying to print marketing collaterals, the price of creating an email marketing campaign is rather affordable.

 

 

#2 Email Marketing Has a Wide Reach

 

Social media platforms are, nowadays, all the rage in digital marketing thanks to their impressive user counts. And the numbers are really astonishing – Instagram has around two billion monthly active users, TikTok surpassed one and a half billion at the beginning of 2023, and YouTube has over two and a half billion.

 

But email marketing boasts a much wider audience pool – in fact, almost double that of YouTube. Namely, according to Statista‘s data, there are 4 billion daily email users. By 2025, the number is expected to reach 4.6 billion.

 

Moreover, stats suggest that email users are responsible when it comes to checking new messages. An astonishing 99% of email users check their inboxes every day, with nearly 60% doing that first thing in the morning.

 

Email is so ubiquitous because it’s basically the currency of the web – anyone doing anything online has an active email address. We need one when making an online purchase, creating a profile on social platforms, sharing valuable work or study materials, etc.

 

Last but not least – most people have multiple email accounts – 1.75 per person to be precise. In most cases, there is a clear delineation between work and personal use, meaning your promotional emails are more welcome in your customers’ inboxes created for job/hobby/entertainment purposes.

 

 

#3 Email Marketing Reaches Mobile Consumers

 

Many businesses still struggle with reaching out to and engaging their audience on mobile. For instance, display ads are obnoxiously stressful to deal with on small mobile screens.

 

The fate of keyword ads on mobile is shrouded in uncertainty as Google recently introduced infinite scroll on mobiles – making it easy for users to scroll past ads in a single finger movement. Moreover, there are also issues of poor responsiveness and optimization of websites for mobile devices.

 

Luckily for you, a business owner/marketer keen on leveraging email marketing, around two-thirds of emails are read on smartphones or tablets.

 

This is what makes email marketing a truly effective tactic for attracting and engaging consumers on mobile devices – businesses get the opportunity to put their message right in front of mobile users.

 

 

#4 Email Marketing is Largely Automated

 

Another major benefit of email marketing is the possibility of automating its processes across the board. There are numerous email marketing automation tools available on the market, covering from the simplest to the most elaborate tasks.

 

For instance, you can automate sending a welcome email to a user who just subscribed to your newsletter, or an email reminding leads they left items in their shopping cart, and nudging them to finalize the shopping.

 

Automation in email marketing is so effective because it plays into the relevancy and timeliness of your emails. These automation tools use triggers and workflows to send messages after the users took a specific action.

 

30% of professionals, report time savings as the biggest benefit of marketing automation. Lead generation and increase in revenue closely follow, with the ability to retain customers and monitor campaign performance also finding their place on the list.

 

Email marketing automation can be done with the help of professionals – partnering with a reliable digital agency can significantly enhance its effectiveness.

 

 

#5 Email Marketing is Easily Personalized

 

Personalization is one of the key drivers of conversion and customer satisfaction in this digital age. Consumers want content and ads tailored to their needs and preferences.

 

Unlike keyword ads or content marketing, which cannot be tailored for everyone, email marketing is super easy to personalize – both in terms of the messaging and the content delivered.

 

Data collected from subscribers and leads is invaluable in creating personalized and relevant content your audience is more likely to act on.

 

For instance, simply using the user’s name in the email (which the user provided upon creating an account) makes a significant difference in boosting your email’s clickthrough rates.

 

In addition, you can try out segmenting the users from your email list, based on common characteristics, such as a common geographic area, interests, or demographic information.

 

 

#6 Email Marketing Boasts Great Performance Stats

 

Last but not least, email marketing provides businesses with some amazing KPIs. For example, the open rate across industries is at almost 20%, CTR slightly over 11%, and the bounce rate at only 9.4%.

 

Besides the stats themselves, the performance of email marketing isn’t guesswork, as you can leverage analytics to truly assess whether your tactics are working or not.

 

For instance, you can see which users opened your emails, whether they clicked any links, took any action – or perhaps unsubscribed from your list after opening the mail.

 

All these pieces of information become valuable when tweaking your future email marketing strategy and making adjustments for improvement.