Is Email Marketing Still Effective Today [Yes! Here’s Why]

You might be wondering if email marketing is still effective. After all, when it comes to online communication, you are probably much more likely to send a friend a text message, a WhatsApp, or even a Facebook message.

But we’re not talking about personal messages today. In the world of business, the research shows that email is very much alive, well, and thriving.

In fact, a whopping 309.6 billion emails are sent and received each day in 2021 [1] and as the years pass this figure is set to grow exponentially. 

So, it’s safe to say that email marketing (see also ‘Email Vs Social Media‘) is very much still relevant today. But we’ll take a closer look at this now. 

What Is Email Marketing? 

Let’s start off by actually defining email marketing itself. It’s pretty simple, really.

Email marketing (see also ‘How to earn money with email marketing‘) is a direct marketing strategy that reaches customers via their email accounts. It is one of the most basic yet vital steps to help grow your business. 

The first thing that you’ll need to do is build an email list. You do this by encouraging people to opt-in for your emails, usually by offering something valuable as an ethical bribe.

What’s great about email marketing is that it’s a pretty cheap way to stay connected with customers and subscribers.

Why Do Companies Bother With Email Marketing? 

Companies use email marketing because it makes them money.

In fact, email marketing has one of the highest returns on investment of all the marketing channels, beating social media by 40x, according to a McKinsey report [2].

It allows you to send information to a wide range of people at once and you’re going to yield results from this. For example,

• Do you want to let customers know about new deals? Email them.
• Do you want to let customers know about new products that are available? Email them.
• Do you have items on sale? Email them and let them know about the slash in prices. 

A lot of the time your client won’t know about any of the new products or services that you’re offering or the sales you have on unless they check your website.

And unless they need something they’re not going to do that.

Reminding them through email could be the thing that gets them to click on your website and purchase something they want but didn’t necessarily think of searching for. 

Email marketing is a way of enticing people into your business or website and tempting them to make a purchase.

And it really can work. It really can boost profits.

So, Is It Still Relevant Today? 

Absolutely! Email marketing has been leading the pack for a long time, and time after time it has shown results and that it is an effective marketing strategy.

Regardless of why you want to send out a message, there really is no other way to broadcast that message to so many people so easily and quickly as it is with emails. 

And as social media channels continue to throttle the reach of marketers as they try to squeeze every drop of profit from their platforms, email is going to continue winning for a long time.

You can bet your bottom dollar that email marketing won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. 89% of marketers still use email as their primary channel for generating leads (see also ‘How Many Emails Does It Take To Convert A Lead?‘).

And 72% of customers say that they prefer email as their main channel for business communication. So for information senders and receivers alike, it is evident that email is still the way forward. 

So if you have a business, you really should ensure that you are partaking in some kind of email marketing to ensure that you continue to drive up traffic. 

Of course, there is a careful line to walk.

To be effective, email marketing needs to be done correctly and carefully.

The last thing you want is to get complaints because you simply spam out offers.

But for every dollar spent on email marketing, you’ll get around $40 back in return [3].

So it is clearly still very important and extremely profitable to do. And it’s something you can use to reach pretty much anybody.

Everyone has an email address, you can’t really be on the internet without one.

You can’t sign up to social networking sites, you can’t even download apps or games on your phone without one.

So just reaching even a small fraction of the 4 billion email users worldwide is going to help you reach your business goals. 

What Does The Future Hold? 

Will email marketing always be effective and relevant?

It’s hard to know for sure, as there’s no way to truly predict the future.

But as it stands, with each year that passes the email marketing world sure gets a little tougher, and more saturated.

This is why it is so important to ensure the quality of the emails that send out.

Send too many emails that are deemed useless or irrelevant and you’re either going to get ignored or they’re going to unsubscribe. 

Obviously, you won’t be the only business sending them emails. Most people’s emails now are littered with lots of businesses sending them product updates and offers.

So don’t expect your clients to read every email you send or you’re going to be bitterly disappointed. You’ll see this from your open rates. 

I think in the future, the trend towards personalized and customer specific email marketing will continue. It’s going to be more and more important to ensure you send the right message to the right people at the right time.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, email marketing only continues to grow and grow, and I don’t see it disappearing anytime soon.

Though social media may have become more appealing for personal conversations, it is clear that for both businesses and customers alike, the preferred method of communication for product and service information is still via email. 

Going forward, business must continue to set themselves apart from the competition. This means tailoring their relevant information to their intended target audience.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/456500/daily-number-of-e-mails-worldwide/

[2] https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/why-marketers-should-keep-sending-you-emails

[3] https://www.emailmonday.com/dma-national-client-email-report-2015/