Does Email Marketing Still Work?

You may be wondering, email marketing is still relevant in 2022, right? That would be like asking if communication, in general, is still relevant? Well, you can bet it is. It is more relevant now than ever before.

Research shows us that email is still the best channel to reach people on, ahead of other channels, even with the increase in popularity of social media and other messaging platforms. Email users are anticipated to continue growing. In 2021, approximately 309.6 billion emails were sent and received daily. 

Webinars, video campaigns, and social media posts are relatively new channels for marketers to reach their customers. But, your contemporary communication methods shouldn’t distract you from one of the oldest, yet most effective, strategies — email marketing. In fact, email ROI is an impressive $36 for every $1 spent. 

Table of Contents

• How Email Marketing Should Work for a Small Business
  • What Email Marketing Helps With
  • Content
• What Forbes Says About Email Marketing
• Four Facts Proving Email Marketing is Still Valid
  • Billions of Emails are Sent Daily
  • Email Marketers Prove it Takes Time
  • Teenagers and Adults Are Using Email
  • Yet Millennials Are the Largest Users of Emails
• Top Email Marketing Companies
• What's Next?

Here are some quick facts about email marketing:

• There are 4 billion daily email users. This number is expected to climb to 4.6 billion by 2025.
• 64% of small businesses use email marketing to reach customers.
• 37% of brands are increasing their email budget, and just 1.3% are making cuts.
• 77% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months.
• Globally, Fridays see the highest email open rates (nearly 19%), compared to the lowest open rates (17%) on Saturdays.
• 64% of B2B marketers say their email marketing strategy was effective for meeting business goals in 2021.
• A majority of email views come from mobile devices (41%), followed by desktop (39%).

How Email Marketing Should Work for a Small Business

Email marketing is still a great tool that works to help you grow your business. It all starts by building a good email list first, which ultimately enables you to create leads that can then be nurtured through the sales funnel. And that’s where the process to design and send compelling email campaigns comes into play. From there, you can target a specific audience at any given time, with a few simple segments. Whereby, keeping them engaged and wanting more.

Email marketing is a very cost-effective exercise to get started with, and is not a difficult practice to undertake. What is more, it can also work by increasing your brand awareness and driving more traffic to your website.

What Email Marketing Helps With

• Improve customer retention through consistent engagement
• Reach new customers through your online content
• Build a brand through thought leadership
• Drive sales with a customer loyalty program
• Promote new products or services
• Learn more about what your customers like and dislike

Content

Content is the key to how well your email marketing will work for you. But it does start with optimal things to check off, such as:

• A great, enticing subject line that makes your audience want to open the email.
• Clearly showing value you're offering to give the contact. This can be done by offering something for free, a coupon code, or something downloadable that they can use in the future.
• Do A/B testing to see how most of your audience responds to things like images, gifs, different headlines, etc.

Marketing ecommerce email should be packed full of product content since services are the types of businesses that should focus on content like newsletters, free services, tips, and anything else that will best benefit a customer or lead. We shouldn't have to get into the nitty gritty of why it's important to segment your contact lists.

If you follow the above guide on how to develop solid content, then you're audience won't have to search for what they need, you'll close more sales, and quickly see your revenue skyrocket. When this happens, this will allow you to invest more later as your audience grows along with your email marketing needs. 

What Forbes Says About Email Marketing

According to the report, 66% of businesses surveyed say they use email marketing to “promote their businesses or communicate with leads and/or customers.”

Of those surveyed, 79% say it’s “important” or “very important” to their businesses. However, while business owners acknowledge the importance of email marketing in general, only 60% think their own email marketing strategies are “effective” or “very effective,” while 26% say it’s either “ineffective” or “very ineffective.”

Effective email strategies are “personal, targeted, and crafted with the customers’ objectives and objections in mind.”

Ways you measure a successful email is...

You cannot know how effective your email marketing is without defining the parameters you want to measure. The two most common measurements for small businesses are open rates and click-through rates:

• Open rates—65% of small businesses average open rates between 11% and 50%.
• Click-through rates—The study showed many small businesses need to improve their click-through rates; 77% of small businesses average email click-through rates between 0% and 10%.

Four Facts Proving Email Marketing is Still Valid

There’s no question that modern internet surfers are actively using email. They’re reading it, sending it, and, most importantly, engaging with marketing messages from businesses.

To help prove just how relevant email is, and just how engaged email users are, we’ve gathered facts, quotes, and statistics that show exactly what's going on in users' inboxes. These eye-opening truths demonstrate that email isn’t going anywhere.

Billions of Emails Are Sent Daily

Data from Statista reveals that over 269 billion emails were sent each day in 2017. Meanwhile, in 2018, the number of emails sent per day is expected to top 280 billion.

People are engaging with their email accounts, and it’s still one of the major online channels of communication. If you tap into it with your marketing skills, you can potentially reach masses of people who are ready to read your content.

Email Marketers Prove it Takes Time

email is one of the most important ways to communicate with your base. If your email marketing isn’t working, your email program is “sick” and needs help.

Email isn’t the problem–it’s how you approach doing email marketing that matters. It's a combination of how you solve email marketing problems, like low open rates, low click-through rates, high unsubscribe rates, as well as execute and refine new strategies. 

Teenagers and Adults are Using Email

In the United States, the most popular online activity for adults is sending/reading email. 85% of internet users spend their time this way every single day.

If you think you can’t reach younger demographics through email, think again.

Teenagers are often associated with texting, social media, and social messaging/multimedia apps like Snapchat and Instagram. However, while there are plenty of modern alternatives, teenagers are still using email.

From their study of 1,200 internet users spanning from teens to baby boomers, Adestra found that 78% of teens use email regularly. Of those teens aged 14-18, nearly 78% call it a “fact of everyday life.” Among young adults aged 19-24, about 84% feel the same way.

Yet Millennials Are the Largest Users of Email 

Let’s not forget about millennials in their mid-twenties to early thirties—they’re even more obsessed with email than teens. Which makes sense because teens are more interested in advertising on social media. 

According to a 2017 Adobe Campaigns consumer email survey, this generation checks their email anywhere and everywhere. That includes while watching their favorite TV show, while lying in bed, during their vacation, while talking on the phone, during a meal, and even when they’re in the bathroom.

Top Email Marketing Companies

Does email marketing work better based on which platform you choose? What matters most is what platform works for your business and goals. Generally, most email marketing software that marketers still use religiously performs the same tasks. The question is how well and simple these tasks are to complete.

Everything can benefit from email marketing, such as social media marketing (which requires some social media management), a written article on your blog page, or simply reaching out to people in person. Email marketing is what you ultimately want people to read to convert leads into customers or raise your company from a small business to a medium and large-grossing one.

WebFX

Marketers turn to WebFX for their SEO services, such as a custom SEO strategy from their team to integrate into your website. But they also have a decent platform for email marketing. They offer a more personalized approach for businesses doing marketing through email for the first time or for those who want the entire professional package when it comes to email marketing. 

Like most digital marketing, or specifically email marketing platforms, most still believe in giving helpful guides to create the email campaign you have in mind. However, you will be expected to call, give the company an idea of what your goals are, what your target audience is like, and more in order to get a quote. You can freely just send them a website if you already have one in order to get a quote for certain services as well.

TruVISIBILITY

Not only a website and chatbot builder, TruVISIBILITY can implement their expansive email platform on social media channels or any other digital marketing space. If your company wants to have simple management over a website or landing page in addition to email management, TruVISIBILITY gives the option for users to try out their all-in-one suite for free. 

Check out how you can integrate your SEO, email, blog page, landing page, etc. for free. What's unique about TruVISIBILITY is that they believe in offering this service for free for as long as you need. 

Mailchimp

Mailchimp has been an email leader marketers of other companies get because of their experience in this realm. To get data-driven marketing automation and specific optimization tools, you'll be looking at upwards of $17 a month. They do have an option to start their services for free, however, if you send to too many contacts or you exceed the email send limit, your service will be paused - meaning it could be hard to catch if your automated emails don't go out.

Much like TruVISIBILITY, Mailchimp does have simple email templates for almost every email campaign need, such as seasonal sales and automated shipping emails.

What's Next?

Email is an enigma to some because it is driven by each server's definition of what counts as spam. That's why what you do to prepare your email marketing plan is nearly more important than actually sending campaigns for best results.

While trends come and go, the signs are that email marketing will be around for some time to come. And by all accounts the use of email marketing is expected to continue growing in 2022 and beyond.

As the digital world continues to grow, so will the need for digital communication. So, if you have been thinking about an alternative solution to email marketing for your marketing needs, or have yet to use it to its full potential, then now is the time to put your foot down and run with the pack before you get left behind.