by Wuraola Ademola-Shanu

Is email marketing dead? With all the talk about video marketing, virtual reality and chatbots, as well as artificial intelligence, it’s not surprising if you feel like email marketing is an ancient practice.

The first marketing email was sent in 1978. The sender was a man named Gary Thuerk who worked for Digital Equipment Corp. His email blast was sent to 400 recipients as a promotion for his company's computers, and it resulted in $13 million in sales. His strategy was what became one of the most highly used marketing strategies to win over customers, generate more leads and keep brands at the forefront of consumers’ minds.

Additionally, in the present world where most people’s inbox is chock-full of emails all competing for attention from a single person, it’s not surprising to hear people label email marketing as spammy, but that’s far from the truth. While email marketing isn’t something or a personal note you get from a friend, family or a colleague you’re chummy with, I daresay that it is something in-between. Depending on the nature of your business and the industry it operates in - when used right, email marketing can be conversational and something your readers will always look forward to reading. So, when used strategically and intentionally with your customers in mind, it is a fantastic tool for building relationships and making money.

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a type of digital marketing strategy that involves the sending of emails to potential and existing customers. When deployed correcting, it is highly effective and can convert potential customers and those sitting on the fence into paying customers, turn one-off buyers into consistent, loyal ones, build your brand’s reputation and engage and attract your audience. So, this guide is for you if you have been wondering what email marketing all about is and whether to jump on the bandwagon. Let’s dive in!

Why Email Marketing?

I have defined the big question, “what is email marketing,” but haven’t gotten into why email marketing is essential for your business and can even become your business’ lifeblood. Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets have made it super-duper easy for people to check their emails on the go, which is why it’s no surprise to see that mobile device users make up for at least 50% of all read emails. Also, checking emails on mobile is especially common with teenagers and millennials. 40% of people 18 years old and under will always open an email on their mobile-first.

In 2019 alone, 293.6 billion emails were sent and received each day (Statista, 2020). That’s a staggering number of daily emails. Not just that, but this figure is expected to increase to over 347.3 billion daily emails in 2022 (Statista, 2020). In 2019, global email users amounted to 3.9 billion users (Statista, 2020). This figure is set to grow to 4.3 billion users in 2023 (Statista, 2020). That’s half of the world’s population.

This email marketing statistic of 2019 will likely prove to you, that email marketing isn’t going anywhere soon. In fact, it’s growing. That’s not all. According to (DMA, 2019), for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42. This tells you that the returns your business can earn on investment is massive if you use a well-thought-out email marketing strategy.

But just because users are checking their email on their smartphones doesn’t mean they’re not checking their emails on desktop too. In fact, 23% of consumers who open an email on a mobile device will open that email again later, many times on desktop. Email is a big part of our lives as professionals, individuals, and even as consumers. Think about this, how many people do you know without an email address? There’s a good chance that they are few. So, why should your business consider email marketing as a part of its business strategy in 2021?

1. Don’t be carried away by social media

Thanks to social media, businesses have the opportunity to set up shop on any of these platforms and start selling and communicating with their audiences. But what happens if any of these platforms close down tomorrow?

What happens if any of these platforms catch a bug and it has to be shut down for days, weeks or months? How do your customers get in touch with you? How do you reconnect with them? How do you stay in touch with them? How do you keep giving them value without losing touch? What happens if your company’s social media account gets hacked?

The solution? Enters email marketing. Don’t get me wrong, social media is an extremely important component in any business’ marketing strategy. Social Media is a great channel for interacting with your audience and strengthening your personal relationships with them. And because of that, it is an important first step towards reaching your ultimate goal – the conversion. But when it comes to converting people into members, customers or supporters, email marketing is the way to go. Email marketing platforms are solid. Thanks to an email list, you have access to your customers’ phone numbers, their email addresses and even birthday dates. So, if you haven’t thought of email marketing, you should. Build an email list by creating a lead magnet.

2. Relationship building

Email marketing allows you to build relationships with leads, customers and past customers. It's your opportunity to speak directly to them in their inbox, at a time that is convenient for them. It is a vibrant and powerful way to connect with people.

3. Email marketing is cost-effective

It’s easy, inexpensive and highly effective. Email marketing allows businesses to reach a large number of prospects and current customers at the rate of little to nearly nothing per message. For business owners on a budget, email marketing is a platform you should highly leverage unlike traditional marketing channels like TV or radio that are costly with all the fees involved.

4. Email marketing is personal and customisable

Have you ever read an email from a favourite brand or influencer who told a story and probably used it to upsell what they are selling? Or maybe you opened the email and saw, “Dear Your Name?” or when a brand sends you a birthday wish on your birthday. How did that make you feel? I bet you established a connection with that brand and the use of your name made you happy. When you write a post on your social media channels, you address all of your audience. There’s no personalization or segregation there. But by using your email marketing software correctly, it allows you to address people individually by name, split certain topics only for certain members of your list and eventually arrive privately in their inbox. According to research from Campaign Monitor, emails with subject lines that include the recipient’s name are 26% more likely to be opened.

5. You can reach more mobile customers with email marketing

Mobile marketing cannot be ignored or underestimated when you are talking about email marketing. According to Global Digital Overview, roughly 4.66 billion people around the world use the internet at the start of 2021 – that’s close to 60 percent of the world’s total population. Most internet users (92.6 percent) use mobile devices to go online at least some of the time, but computers also account for an important share of internet activity.

6. You can automate the email process, and easily

Many digital marketing processes cannot be easily automated. However, email marketing and automation work just fine. Automating your emails helps improve the relevancy and timeliness of your campaigns. You can use triggers and workflows to automatically send messages to consumers after they take a specific action. For example, if a customer visits your eCommerce website, spends time to look at your products and add some to their digital cart; however, for reasons not known to you, they leave the website without making a purchase. With email marketing, you can lead them down the customer journey by sending them an email shortly after they abandoned their cart, reminding them of what they left behind and asking if they need help completing their purchase. This way, you use email marketing to transform a missed opportunity into an opportunity to build a stronger relationship and probably a sale. And if you don’t make a sale right there, you can be sure that they’d keep you at the top of their minds and come back later.

When Should You Use Email Marketing?

You can use email marketing for any of the following reasons:

Boost brand awareness: Using email marketing here sees you keep your business and its products or services constantly at the top of the mind of your prospects. It makes it easy for them to make a purchasing decision whenever they are ready to buy.
Build relationships: Email marketing allows you to establish connections, humanize your brand and make your business relatable via personalized engagement.
Content promotion & distribution: You can use email to inform your audience of the latest events happening in your industry and business, share relevant blog posts and other useful resources.
Lead generation: You can entice subscribers or potential ones to drop their personal information in exchange for a resource or an asset that they will find valuable.
Marketing: Emails are a great way to promote your products and services.
Lead Nurturing: A great way to make sales indirectly by providing your customers and prospects with content that would help them achieve their goals.

How To Get Started with Email Marketing

Wondering how to get started with email marketing without feeling overwhelmed? Check out the tips below:

Create an email marketing strategy: A report by DMR shows that customers receive 121 emails every day. That means, if you don’t take the time to develop a badass email marketing strategy, your emails will get lost in crowded inboxes, be sent to the spam folder, or even worse, they’d unsubscribe to reduce the bedlam in their inboxes. So, think of the following steps I’m about to share as your go-to guide for creating a kickass strategy and getting your email marketing right.

1. Define your audience

Your emails can only be effective and convert highly if it’s relevant to your audience. And so, craft a buyer persona to help you understand who your audience is, what they want, their lifestyle and spending habits, average earning income, places of socialization, their interests, etc. You need all of this information if you want to specifically tailor your email campaign to your audience’s needs.

2. Establish your business goals

Before sending out emails, you must know what your business intends to achieve. Do you want to achieve brand visibility and awareness? Do you want to achieve brand recall? Revenue generation? Establishing these goals are necessary when creating your campaign goals. Plus, it determines the type of content to create in the customer buyer journey.

3. Build an email list with a lead magnet

You can’t send out emails if you have no one to send them to. And another important thing to note is your email marketing campaign won’t work if you already have a list, but they aren’t the right people. This means you need to capture leads to grow your email list with the right target audience. How do you achieve that? You do that by creating a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a free item or service you give away in exchange for getting contact details. Lead magnets could be in form of eBooks, demo trials, free trials, free consultation, swipe files, checklists and cheat sheets, case studies, white papers, infographics, etc. Your target audience has to fill in their names and other contact info such as email address and phone number before they can access the resource(s).

4. Use an email marketing platform/service provider

You need an ESP (email service provider) to create a landing page for your lead magnet, segment your audience, organize your list, and distribute email campaigns to your audience. You can also track the results to improve future campaigns. A good email marketing platform should also integrate seamlessly with other marketing tools you use to enhance automation as your email list grows. There are lots of email service providers out there, but the top of what comes to mind and based on experience, I’d recommend Mail Chimp, Mad Mimi, Convert Kit, Constant Contact, Sendinblue and HubSpot.

5. Choose an email campaign type and schedule

Depending on your brand’s goals and objectives, email campaigns can vary. Should you send out new product announcements or a weekly newsletter sharing your latest blog posts? And that can be very tasking. From new content announcement to product updates, event invitation, co-marketing, dedicated send, social media and transactional emails; there’s a vast array to pick from. All you need to do is know what email campaign type to employ, draft your email and schedule it for sending.

Conclusion

There are tons of information out there and it can be very confusing – especially if you don’t know what to do or have a prior idea about the topic or subject matter. This applies to email marketing too. However, some important things to note when sending emails are to use an enticing headline/subject line, use a real person’s name in the sender field, personalize the email (people want to feel like they’re more than just a number), use power words to inspire readers to take action, experiment with numbers and statistics, experiment with emojis and gifs, never use all-caps (it sounds like you’re shouting in your readers’ faces), and write and straight-to-the-point emails. Readers have little to zero patience for content that beats around the bush.

Finally, don’t forget to use call-to-actions, offer something valuable, sell benefits and not features, develop a distinctive brand voice and always keep your readers in mind when crafting emails.

Wuraola Ademola-Shanu is a copywriter, content strategist & creator who helps professionals, consultants, and business owners align their stories with their ideal clients, refine their sales funnels, and expand their online reputations. That can take the form of a great bio, article, or other marketing material that puts the client’s best foot forward, and connects magnetically with the people whom they can help the most. As a freelance consultant, her creative marketing efforts are focused on small businesses and individuals. Wuraola is also a copyeditor and proofreader. She has edited and proofread novels, short stories, infographics, website copies, web content, and journal articles. This job requires her to bring a fresh eye to a writer's work. Wuraola uses what she learns about a writer's manuscript to assist in transforming the book into a tightly written piece. You can connect with her via email at Omobolanleshanu@gmail.com and on Instagram (TheCopywritingChick).