If you’re like most business owners, CEOs, marketing VPs, and tender startup interns, you know your business’ bottom line is only as good as its marketing — even if your product or service is top-notch. And whether your budget is massive or miniscule, crafting an effective marketing campaign is as much about where you market as how. While traditional means and mediums of marketing continue to be relevant and important — with word-of-mouth marketing holding sway as the gold standard — the Internet always seems on the cusp of eclipsing other forms of marketing’s relevance.
As social media, mobile and tablet use, apps, and the like continue to explode in use, it can be tempting to start putting all your focus there, but you’d be wise to stick to the most traditional digital medium there is: email. If you’re skeptical about email marketing’s proven and consistent prowess, here are seven reasons why it’s still king.
1. It’s Effective
Put simply, the main reason email marketing continues to be the most relevant form of digital marketing across the vast and ever-changing digital landscape is because it works. Unlike social media advertising, banners, mobile marketing, and other current digital marketing trends, email boasts a solid return on investment — especially when you collaborate with email marketing experts. In spite of the fact that people spend more time on social media than they do with email, an email marketing effort is three times more likely to result in purchases than is any advertising through social media.
2. It Isn’t Hard
Another reason email marketing is effective is because utilizing it isn’t difficult to do. As long as your emails have clear and concise calls to action, excellent subject lines, and great content — aspects of almost any good marketing plan — you’re going to be effective. Other forms of digital marketing struggle with different layers of difficulty. Social media’s rolling newsfeeds decrease the likelihood of your targeted demographic seeing the ad you crafted, while mobile marketing is plagued by formatting and responsive design problems. Email, however, is easy.
3. Email Customers Are More Valuable Than Other Customers
What if the customers you gained through a particular type of marketing proved time and time again to spend more money with you than the customers you gained through another marketing route? Wouldn’t you beef up your efforts in that channel to draw in more customers through it? Well, it turns out that email is that more valuable digital channel. Customers acquired through email spend 17 percent more than customers gained through social media.
4. It’s Permission Based
If you’re sending out emails to former, current, or potential customers, you’re doing so with the express permission of the person receiving the email. This permission-based status means your company and its products aren’t viewed as unwanted spam — even if your call to action isn’t heeded. The permission-based nature of email marketing makes it more relational, which is one of the reasons why email works.
5. Inboxes Are Personal
A person’s inbox is one of the few digital spaces left that is truly personal, where what exists within has been curated by the person using it. Unlike billboards, banners, radio spots, social media newsfeed blurbs, and mobile ads, an email is a singular event that is its own reason for being read. Almost all other forms of marketing are trying to catch the audience while they’re engaged in something else.
6. Everybody Uses It
While declarations about the death of email abound, it turns out that 91 percent of us still use it each and every day. Social media use is scattered among a dozen or so popular sites, and there is no Internet site — not even Facebook — that 91 percent of us browse each day. From a marketer’s perspective, that high use means your ad — even if it isn’t clicked on — will still most likely be glanced at by everyone who receives it.
7. It Works on Mobile
When it comes to the mobile web, effective marketing still feels like it’s in a bit of a Wild West phase. That being said, mobile and tablet use of the Internet is set to eclipse laptops and desktops soon, which means that marketing on this medium is going to be increasingly essential. Email remains applicable on the mobile web, so even as marketers try and figure out the best ways to advertise within this new frontier, email retains its relevancy.
So, don’t believe the hype about every next, big thing on the Internet. Email marketing is still the most effective way you can drive sales for your business in the digital world.
