You’ve heard it from lazy marketers and mediocre salesmen. “Email marketing is dead.” In fact, it’s become the rally cry of just about every person on the sales side of the business that doesn’t understand how emails work or doesn’t want to spend the time to work them.
Email, however, wants you to know that it’s far from dead. It’s quite the opposite. It’s alive and well, and even growing.
Even now, email is still a powerhouse.
Why All The Pessimism?
The marketing industry as a whole seems to think that email doesn’t have the same value it had in the early days of the net. Back about 20 years ago, people were excited to receive an email. They loved that announcement on their desktop from AOL. “You’ve got mail!” They would open and read seemingly everything, and marketers loved the exposure. It felt like a guarantee.
As the years grew on, people became more immune to the idea that the inbox was an exciting place to look. Soon, that same source of daily anticipation became a nightmare. Inboxes swelled, sometimes having thousands of emails for users to sort. The headache of finding the best in the bunch became too much. As a result, marketers were putting in more effort and getting less return.
To them, the death of email was eminent.
As the problem grew for consumers, email providers began offering tools to help sort through the fodder. Spam filters, inbox folders, and email blacklists helped sort the mess into a manageable clutter. These tools were turned against marketers, whose emails felt more like cold calls from telemarketers. Email lists, after all, were being bought and sold, and people didn’t understand why they were getting emails from companies they had no business with. Eventually, many marketing professionals decided to abandon email marketing for something more fruitful.
Alive And Well
But if you pay attention to the realities, email is doing just fine, and the savvy marketer that takes the time to learn the ins-and-outs of drafting a good email campaign stands to benefit hugely. With new email users growing rapidly and an overwhelming preference for email communication, the evidence suggests that a well-planned email campaign could produce more profit in the future than the medium has ever produced before. Check out the facts.
Email is predicted to grow to 5.59 billion accounts in 2019
In 2015, the Raticati Group predicted that email accounts, which numbered 4.35 billion, would grow a staggering 26% in the following 4 years. That’s a huge jump for a dead technology.1
Shoppers prefer email marketing communications
According to MarketingSherpa, a staggering 72% of consumers say they prefer email communications from companies they do business with. In fact, 61% want those emails weekly, and 28% want them more often than that. Clearly there’s plenty of life in those numbers.2
Email is better at getting new customers
According to a McKinsey & Company study, email performs 40x Better than social media for new customer acquisition. 40. Times. Better.3
Email makes sales
In 2015’s holiday pulse report, Custora showed growth in holiday sales due to email. Email marketing was responsible for 12.1% of holiday sales in 2015 over 2014. It’s also one of the strongest sources, beat by organic search, direct traffic, and paid search. Dead technology doesn’t grow.4
Marketing emails get more opens
Here’s the one that defies logic. According to Experian, transactional emails (the ones that come after a purchase or communication) generate 8 times more opens and clicks and 6 times more revenue than any other email. Imagine making 6 times more money.5
Good Email Marketing Is About Technique
If you want to capture attention in a crowded inbox and start seeing these stats work in your favor, you need to make sure you’re making a real effort to use email correctly. It’s takes a real-time investment to make sure you only communicate with people who want to hear from you and that you personalize everything. It’s that effort that really pays off.
References
- Raticati Group Email Statistics Report 2015-2019
- MarketingSherpa Marketing Research Chart: How do customers want to communicate?
- McKinsey & Company “Why Marketers Should Keep Sending You Emails
- Custora Holiday Pulse Report 2015
- Experian Transactional Email Report
