How Important Is Email Marketing?

Should you still use email marketing in 2022 or 2023? Or should you scrap the idea, move on, and start using a different, more current marketing method altogether?

If you’re thinking about these questions right now, chances are you’ve read somewhere that email marketing is dead. Well, we're here to say that email marketing and valuable email content is far from dead. In fact, it continues to bring meaningful results (and revenue) to businesses and value to marketers.

In this guide, we’ll talk about the importance of email marketing for every type of business and some tips and strategies to improve your small business email campaigns.

How Is Email Marketing Important for All Businesses?
Why Email Marketing Campaigns vs Other Marketing Channels?
Why Is Email Good for Small Businesses?
- You Own Your Data
- Email Is Great for Personalized Marketing
Top Email Marketing Examples
What Forbes Says About Email Marketing
What's Next?

How Is Email Marketing Important for All Businesses?

There are 4 reasons email campaigns stand tall against other marketing tools for businesses. Sure, chatbots can act sort of like a landing page for your business (if it collects personal information from people), and landing pages are an important product to invest in in order for email to work for you, but the right email tools can do the following things for a small business - or any business for that matter.

Note that these benefits are true for both ecommerce businesses that sell products, contractors, software as a service companies, realtors, and every type of business in between.

Email’s Great for Customer Acquisition

Connect with your customers by collecting their emails and getting their consent to include them in your email advertising campaigns. Promotional emails are perfect avenues for educating your audience and presenting your offers without being too pushy or intrusive.

Remember these tips when reaching out to your customers using email marketing.

Your email marketing content needs to pack a punch. It needs to be value-laden if you want to retain your customers. You can share tips and tricks, how your product solves their problems, its features and best uses, etc.
Send email content with interactive formats, and diversify. Insert videos, infographics, GIFs, and different newsletter layouts, for example.
Keep your subject lines concise and straightforward. Be direct or ask questions that rouse their curiosity. This will increase open rates.

Here are some of the best examples of campaigns with snappy subject lines and content.

Email Generates Website Traffic and Drives Sales

Even your most loyal, important customers don’t visit your website daily. It’s not that they aren’t interested in your content. They are just busy with other things.

This is where email marketing comes in.

Use emails to remind your audience of your brand and show a glimpse of your website content. Send summaries of your new blog posts, for instance, the way ezpz did below. It displayed thumbnails and summaries of its website and social content. Customers can click on the titles to read the rest of the content.

Email Is Cost-Effective

Yes, we know you were waiting for us to address this one. You can reach a large number of consumers for less than pennies per message. The cost per (possible) conversion is so low with email marketing, I cannot believe every company does not participate, or engage more often.

Email marketing services like TruVISIBILITY costs $0.00 cents per message at their Freemium Marketing Email level. Only pay as you grow.

Mailchimp allows you to send up to 12,000 emails a month for free. They also do offer larger monthly plans for growing businesses with up to 600,000 subscribers and high volume sender plans for anything over that.

Another paid email marketing company, Vertical Response, offers free email marketing up to 4,000 emails a month and 1,000 email contacts. They also offer subscription services for higher-volume senders.

So, yes, while it does offer a significant ROI, it might be a wise idea to hire someone to manage these efforts. According to Shout It Out Designs, at a 15,000 email database, your company would spend about 152 hours per year managing the campaign. This would include writing, drafting, scheduling, sending, etc. of the emails, answering any questions about offers, missing coupons or other concerns and database maintenance: adding and deleting members, updating information and other tasks.

Reach Customers in Real Time

54% of all emails were opened on a mobile device. This is significant and should come into play when planning any marketing strategy. More and more consumers are using their mobile devices to access not only emails but all other types of media and information.

Not only that, well-designed emails produce higher conversion rates on mobile than any other medium. We talk a little more about the importance of mobile devices when it comes to email marketing later.

Another timely benefit to email? One of the benefits of email marketing can be to sell your products, obviously, if you approach it the right way. It’s important to use all the customer data and information you can. Sending customers a special offer on their birthday, or letting them know their favorite dish is half off is much more effective than simply sending them a menu.

This email marketing strategy also can incorporate seasonal offers, allowing you to promote a holiday special or an annual sale. Be sure to create a sense of urgency for any offer – customers are much more likely to purchase when a deal is ending soon.

Why Email Marketing Campaigns vs Other Marketing Channels?

Why not get a marketing program to just display ads and banners that direct people to your business site? Why not just pay a huge amount of money to have your business slogan on a billboard? Try as you might, nothing else stacks up against email.

Learn why customers want and almost expect email year after year.

Email Builds Relationships and Credibility for Small Businesses

Credibility is that badge of authority and trust that people give you. It's that badge that helps you stand out from the noise of competitors and cluttered email boxes. Building credibility for your brand through email isn't difficult. You just have to keep your communication honest and authentic and show your expertise in your domain.

Personalization, or in other words, understanding your audience, goes a long way in building relationships with your customers. Email gives you a chance to proactively reach out to leads and clients to show your enthusiasm and interest. People are bound to notice your enthusiasm.

Email is Scalable and Measurable

Scalability directly relates to your growth. In the case of email, scaling is very simple. You scale as your subscribers increase.

The beauty of email is that you don’t need sophisticated measures in place before your email list starts to grow. Almost every email marketing software provides plans that scale as the list grows.

Another advantage of email is that you can scale the actions you take for 10 people, to perform them for 100,000 people with the same speed and precision, no matter how much content is packed in one email.

Numbers, numbers, and more numbers. As a marketer or business owner, you're probably well aware of all the numbers you have to deal with to account for your spending.

Email marketing makes accounting and measuring quite easy. Most email marketing services give you access to critical analytics like:

Email open rates
Click rates
Bounce rates
Percentage of clicks
Emails opened by geography
Emails opened by device/browser

Email Marketing Builds More Brand Awareness

Sure, you can build brand awareness through social media ads, but potential customers like to see how you really advertise. And, more importantly, they like to see what your business really offers. Have sales? Want to showcase more details about a particular product or service? This is why email marketing can fill in the blanks that social media can't fill.

The more they know about you and hear from you, the more likely they will buy from you.

You can use emails in a few ways to hold your recipients’ attention. Using email after seeking permission, you can send subscribers:

Industry updates
Expert advice
Market news
Blog updates

Marketing Campaigns Directly Relates to More Mobile Email Usage

Mobile devices, which nearly every potential customer owns, allows them to check emails more frequently.

You click ‘send’ on an email and within an instant, hundreds and potentially thousands of people get notified through an electronic slab they’re holding in their pockets. How amazing is that?

The combination of mobile devices and email marketing gives you the unprecedented advantage of speed and reach in executing your marketing.

Small businesses that may not have an experienced marketing team should remember to keep these things in mind when creating campaigns for mobile for the first time through their email marketing automation, specifically (but this applies to all campaigns):

Adding alt text
Properly sized images
Use buttons instead of inline CTAs for a better UX
Evenly proportioned text in combination with images
Refraining from using multiple column layouts, unless created with a responsive template

The Importance of Testing Emails

You cannot as easily test social posts as you can email campaigns. This is why email is not dead and is best for businesses growing their contact list.

A/B testing with your email marketing is like butter on toast, two peas in a pod, cheese and macaroni (anyone else getting hungry?). Harness the power of customer data to know exactly how your target customer will respond to your emails.

You may not realize it, but the emails you receive in your personal inbox are more than likely contributing to the metrics in a more extensive marketing study. Our inbox habits and actions are being analyzed from the second we receive an email to the minute we click on a link in an email, and beyond. Okay, I'll get off my "big brother" soapbox, as I'm sure now you'll think twice before opening the next marketing email you receive.

Given the bandwidth, testing should be well integrated into your marketing efforts. You'll unlock the answers to a multitude of questions like:

Do your emails receive higher open rates with emojis in the subject line?
Do click-through rates increase with HTML or plain-text emails?
Do unsubscribe rates increase with fewer or greater images/graphics?

Email Campaigns Still Do Better Than Other Marketing Avenues

Among marketing channels, email marketing yields the highest return on investment (ROI) for the past 10 years. It also has the highest conversion rate (66%) for purchases made in response to promotional messages.

For every dollar spent on email marketing, you can earn up to $44, with almost 4.3% of shoppers buying from your campaigns.

Compared with social media like Twitter and Facebook, email is 40 times more effective in acquiring new customers. You’re also more likely to get click-throughs from email marketing than tweets.

Get better results out of your email marketing campaigns by using these tips.

Use email marketing software with performance optimization and analytics features. This allows you to make data-backed adjustments to your campaigns.
Track your key performance metrics regularly. Experiment with tactics to see which ones work, and continually improve them.

Why Is Email Marketing Good for Small Businesses?

Here are the benefits of email marketing. All of which are showcased in our Messaging program. Trust us, it's worth trying.

You Own Your Data

Search engines and social media networks are constantly updating their algorithms to improve user experience. Sometimes these tweaks can affect your search results ranking and social visibility.

Imagine if a big algorithm change comes through and you get buried under the rubble. Having a strong email list in such a scenario will be a lifesaver. You would still have a direct line of communication with your leads and customers and can keep them informed with the latest company news and updates.

Email Is Great for Personalized Marketing

A marketer’s dream is to have a unique personalized value proposition for every single potential customer. While marketing is not quite there yet, email marketing does a pretty great job of approximating this dream.

First, you can segment your email lists by whatever customer characteristics you think are relevant to your business. For example, if you’re a sports brand, you can segment your customers by sports they like.

This way you can inform your baseball fans about your new custom baseball uniform, while not disturbing the baskeball aficionado who’s only signed up for Major League basketball news.

Second, marketing has a reputation for being impersonal, email alleviates that concern.

Top Email Marketing Examples

We have a few examples of great email marketing campaigns already in this guide. But what if you need to send different kinds of emails? We got you. Take a look!

For Leads

1) Okay, this example was taken from Hubspot, but it presents a simple action for the potential customer to take (simple CTA button) and a clear message. Anyone in need of doctors will surely take action and benefit from this email.

2) Sometimes you need to set expectations for communication moving forward so that the buyer persona can choose what's best for them. Modcloth does a great job of this to capture many different types of audiences as well.

For Current or Loyal Customers

1) Have a customer already who bought a package or service and need them to upgrade? This is a great idea to increase revenue and make customers aware of your brand still - all while offering a discount!

2) Talk about a tease! But the best kind, of course. This email content is secretive, inviting, and honestly good for leads or loyal customers who've bought from the brand before.

What Forbes Says About Email Marketing

Here is Forbes' important business article.

It states that top email marketing is essential, meaning an email marketing tool should also be in every small, medium, or large business's toolkit.

"Today, email marketing is very much in use. In essence, it's a low-cost method for reaching clients while also aiding in the development of long-term partnerships."

"Email marketing is a boon to digital marketers because it can be used to promote other marketing channels, such as social media platforms. When you use email marketing to promote these channels, you’re making sure your audience gets all the information about your business in one place. This makes it easier for them to make decisions about whether or not they want to make a purchase from you."

They even go on to say that email marketing content is here to stay.

"Email marketing is still relevant and has a long future. It will probably become even more important as time goes on, especially since it’s so easy to use and cost-effective."

"In addition, sending emails isn't the only point of email marketing, but profitability for your company is the goal. In order to avoid sending out pointless messages, you must ensure that everything you send generates real leads and sales. There is no better time to begin focusing your attention on the rising trend of email marketing because as this upward trend continues, you will want to be sure that your brand is ahead of the game."

What's Next?

If you're like us, you want to see your products fly off the shelves and your services to be booked, and email can make all the difference!

Want to ensure you get everything out of your email marketing tools? Maybe start your email marketing strategy by building off of some marketing email templates. TruVISIBILITY has some high-converting ones already built for specific types of email marketing campaigns, like offering digital coupons, celebrating a birthday, or thanking a customer for a recent purchase or subscription sign up.

We list email marketing as the top avenue marketers and business owners should follow to garner the best sales possible and to learn more about their target audience. Build a campaign today with any template you like to see how you can even gain followers on your social channels as well as see a rise in revenue.