Why Email Marketing Still Works and Who Can Benefit 

TikTok videos, Instagram posts, and YouTube channels are all touted as the newest and best methods for marketers to reach their customers. So much so that you might be wondering, ‘Is email marketing dead?’ Not at all! In fact, email is still worth it and is one of the most effective marketing tools to use. 

CURRENT EMAIL MARKETING STATISTICS 

But don’t take our word for it. HubSpot Blog recently surveyed more than 1,000 global marketing professionals working in B2B and B2C companies to find out the channels they leverage the most. Email still ranks in the top three channels B2B and B2C companies leverage in their overall marketing strategies. For a good reason.   

Email marketing has an impressive ROI. On average, you can expect a return of $42 for every $1 spent on email marketing. Twenty per cent of companies can achieve an ROI greater than $70 for every $1.  

Data also shows that email marketing still drives more sales than social media marketing. In fact, shoppers spend 138% more when you market to them by email. Additionally, 50% of people buy from marketing emails at least once per month. 

Lastly, email isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. In 2022, there were 4.3 billion email users worldwide. By 2025, this number is expected to grow to 4.6 billion. That figure represents over half of the world’s population. Moreover, email marketing revenue is expected to reach almost 11 billion by the end of 2023.  

WAYS TO MAKE EMAIL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS COUNT IN 2023 

In short, email marketing is not dead. It is just as powerful today as ever. However, to make email marketing campaigns count, you must know how to effectively drive lead generation.   

Through email marketing basics like defining your target audience, personalization, quality layouts, mobile optimization, providing value, and analyzing data, you can still see excellent results from your email marketing efforts. 

Email marketing today isn’t about sending messages to anyone and everyone you can. Not every email is going to appeal to every single consumer, no matter how well constructed and informative. To make an email marketing campaign count, businesses must define and segment their target audience.   

Email segmentation involves defining your overall target audience, and then breaking down that umbrella list into smaller, more targeted groups. Groups can be segmented by demographic data, a past purchase, or an interaction they carried out on your website. Once defined, email marketing messages can send specific information to target groups. This keeps your email messaging relevant for your subscriber and leads to more consistent open rates.  

Not identifying and segmenting your audience can lead to more than just a reduced turn on investment. Email providers, like Gmail, have multiple inboxes: Primary, Promotions, and Social. The open rates of your email marketing messages determine where your email is sent. The goal is to land in the primary inbox. However, too many emails that are flagged as spam by subscribers will keep your messages in the promotional inbox, or worse, all the emails you send out will go directly to the spam inbox.  

With the right tools and knowledge, creating and sending out personalized email content is easy. And, it is worthwhile to your bottom line. A recent ‘Rise of Personalized Commerce’ study showed that 70% of companies that use advanced personalization have already earned 200% ROI or more from it.  

Yet, customized content is not just about boosting revenues. Personalized emails can help build brand loyalty and improve the customer experience too. Consumers today are interested in buying from brands that offer personalized digital experiences, and they aren’t hesitant to provide the personal information necessary in order to receive those offers and messages that suit their desires.  

However, personalizing emails today isn’t just about inserting a customer’s name into the message or subject line. Today’s email content must be tailored. Messages should recommend products based on user activity, offer promotions by audience segment, and include personalized calls to action. Using segmentation to add these personalized elements is the most effective email marketing campaign strategy and can significantly boost ROI.  

Consider incorporating these email personalizations: 

• Use your subscriber’s name in the greeting or subject line. 
• Send a welcome message to new subscribers. 
• Upsell offers for previous customers. 
• Send subscribers birthday greetings and offerings. 
• Make sure content is relevant to the subscriber’s life stage.  

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that consumers only spend an average of 10 seconds reading brand emails. Therefore, the right content and design of your email marketing campaign are vital to attracting and keeping attention.  

It goes without saying that your emails need to look professional. An email free of grammar and spelling mistakes will boost a brand’s authority and credibility. Additionally, a well-designed visual structure will keep the reader engaged. Perhaps most importantly, the right design will improve click-through and conversion rates. 

When creating emails, incorporate these basic design element guidelines for the highest ROI: 

• Limit subject lines to 6 – 10 words to increase the open rate. 
• Add a sense of urgency to the subject line. It can increase the open rate by 22%. 
• A catchy one-liner is best for the email subject. 
• Use a simple, high-readability font that can be easily scanned. 
• Keep paragraphs short and simple. Try not to exceed 20 lines of text.  
• Ensure links work and are easy to use. 
• Utilize professional images to improve the professionalism of your email, but don’t overdo it! Emails with three or fewer images result in the highest click-through rates.

Extensive research shows that 42.3% of users will delete emails that are not optimized for mobile devices. Considering most email views come from a mobile, you will lose significant sales opportunities if you don’t make your marketing emails mobile friendly. 

Luckily, there are a few things you can do to make your emails more mobile friendly: 

• Keep the subject line and body text of the email short.   
• Use bigger font sizes (12 point or higher) so readers can see content clearly on smaller displays. 
• Move your calls-to-action towards the top.  
• Add preheader text so the reader knows what the email is about. 
• Always test your emails across multiple devices before launching a campaign to ensure a responsive design. 

Marketers can expect increased data privacy regulations in the future, and email won’t be excluded. For now, the most important legislation for email marketing is the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.   

This law includes very specific guidelines for email marketers to follow: 

• Don’t use false or misleading header information.  
• Don’t use deceptive subject lines.  
• Identify the message as an ad.  
• Tell recipients where you’re located.  
• Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future emails from you.  
• Honor opt-out requests promptly.  
• Monitor what others are doing on your behalf.  

Violating these regulations can risk your domain name being banned and your ability to send emails from your domain being stopped. 

As a good practice, email marketers should take time to build their email lists and market only to subscribers who have opted in to receive product and service information. Sending emails to purchased lists rarely works. In general, you just waste time and money and annoy people who aren’t interested in your business.  

The average person will receive over 120 emails per day, including personal, work, spam, social and promotional emails. According to Adobe, that equates to US adults spending five hours a day checking email: 3 hours for work email and 2 hours for personal email.  

With inboxes overflowing, it is important to ensure marketing emails add value to the end user, otherwise they just become annoying. When that happens, users might be urged to unsubscribe from your email list or send your emails to junk. 

Instead of just sending an email for the sake of it, have a goal in mind and make sure there is something valuable included for the user. 

These valuable emails can keep B2C and B2B customers engaged and opening your marketing emails in 2022: 

• Offer a New Subscriber Discount or Value Add: A great way to engage new customers and to get them signed up to your email marketing messages is to offer a discount (i.e.: 10% to 15% off their first purchase). If your business is B2B, or if you don’t sell consumable products, offering subscriber only content will get your email opened. For example, you can provide a pdf of the latest trends in your sector or a pdf of a report you recently commissioned.   

• Send An Abandoned Cart Email with Offer: An abandoned cart email can be automatically sent to a user when they place an item in their shopping cart but don’t make a purchase. Often these are reminders that just say ‘Hey, I think you forgot something.’ For more value-add, consider what might have stopped them from making a purchase and address that issue. For example, if you know the purchase is a large ticket item, send an email that tells the user about financing options and ways to make the purchase easier. If you think the user is just unsure about the purchase, build trust with a product review, product demonstration video, or offer a telephone number for them to speak to someone in sales. These offerings can help overcome user hesitation to purchase and provide value outside of a pure automation email.  

• Make Newsletters Newsworthy: Newsletters are a great way to keep engaged with customers if the content is fresh, newsworthy, and relevant. The newsletters that get opened consistently include ones that alert customers to upcoming sales events, give details about new products or services, and direct users to exciting new content on your website that they may not know about. Without one of these elements, it will just be looked at as Spam.  

• Purchase Thank You with Offer: Another well received email is thanking a customer for their recent purchase and including a discount coupon for a future order. These types of emails make the customer feel valued and encourage a repeat purchase. 

Defining and analyzing your email marketing metrics can determine what you’re doing right and wrong. With this information, you can refine your strategies to improve your campaign performance. A good practice to implement involves A/B testing. Split testing helps ensure you have the best subject line, calls to action, and content to engage your audience. In fact, statistics show that testing your emails leads to a 28% higher ROI.  

Collecting data during and after campaigns can also help you find out how to create better future campaigns. Some key email benchmarks to pay attention to include the following:  

• Open Rate: Assesses your reach and can compare performance against different audience segments. 
• Click-Through Rate: Assesses the relevance of content. 
• Unsubscribe Rate: Might indicate if our subscribers are responding well to campaigns. 
• Bounce Rate: Can highlight email list problems and other delivery issues. 
• List Growth Rate: A low metric will require you to reconfigure your lead generation and communication strategies to improve conversions. 

These are just a few tips your business can use to make the most of email marketing today. To make email marketing even more effortless, contact el LinKe. We can help you create professional-looking, mobile-responsive marketing campaigns that drive results.

Email marketing is still alive and profitable. With this advice, combined with el LiKe’s expertise, you can quickly boost your revenue from email marketing. We will help you optimize your email marketing ROI, properly incorporate email marketing into your overall marketing mix, and identify how email marketing can help you achieve your overall business goals.