Throughout human history, technological inventions and advancements have overall improved the everyday life of humans on the planet. The vast majority of those arrived as manna offered from their creators and transitioned into becoming a de facto part of human life on Earth. Penicillin, for example, was a sensation when it was discovered from Alexander Fleming, but now is a given. The same applies to the Internet, and over the years, the e-mail has taken its place into the list of things we consider as given, conquered, and ours. Things that are a constant in our everyday lives.

As you already know if you own an email and have signed up for at least one eCommerce website in your life, your email is one of the main channels of communication companies use for marketing purposes. Email Marketing was the first form of digital marketing to be created since the Internet went public, and despite what most people might assume, not only it hasn’t become obsolete, but it still is the way-to-go for eCommerce websites and companies to promote themselves online.

With the rise of social media, combined with the continuous evolution of hand-held devices, as a species, we tend to perceive some facts of life as predecessors to current technology. They have just become so fundamental, we don’t even bother ranking them from most to least important. Having an e-mail address is like having a form of ID. Everyone NEEDS one if they want to operate in the human society of 2020 and be 100% active. Social media, require an e-mail. The vast majority of governments, require an e-mail. Access to streaming services requires an e-mail. e-Banking requires an e-mail.

As things are, an e-mail address is one of the most important things a person owns, and it probably is one of the top win-win ways for marketing and advertising currently available to humans. Email Marketing is one of the best advertising ways for small businesses, and its most important aspect is that the only “cost” it has for the receiver, is a few kilobytes of space in your e-mail’s cloud storage. Email Marketing does not include pop-up windows when navigating a website, and many times it may include a special, exclusive offer, available only to those that have received the advertising e-mail.

Social Media Is Still A Toddler

Let’s establish a few things by using the power of statistics and numbers. In extensive research conducted in April 2020 by OptinMonster, it was shown that humans send more than 102 trillion e-mails per year. A projection of the same research showed that this number is expected to reach over 126 trillion e-mails per year by 2022. On average, an e-mail subscriber receives 13 commercial e-mails per day, every single day.

OptinMonster reported that 58% of humans check their e-mail first when their day starts, followed by a 20% that prioritizes searching, leaving social media in 3^rd place with 14% only checking it first. What’s even more interesting is that e-mails have a much higher engagement rate than social media. Most people may believe that through social media, they can reach millions of people, but actually, it is difficult to even reach all of your friends and/or followers in social media, with the average engagement rate being below 0.6%.

The email average open rate is 22.86%, and its click-through rate is at 3.7%! This means that out of all the people an e-mail is sent at, almost 23% of them will open it and read it or check it, and almost 4% will click on the ad of that e-mail, and follow-through (or click-through), to see how they can benefit from said marketing campaign. To put things in numbers, if an e-mail is sent to 100 people, almost 23 of them will read it, and almost 4 will click on its ad. If a post is placed on social media of someone who has 200 followers, 1 of them will see that post, most of the time.

Optimizing Email Marketing

According to a report published in 2019 by DMA Insight, users that are subscribed to a brand and receive newsletters and advertising e-mails usually unsubscribe for three main reasons. The first one is the number of e-mails received, with 59% of users that unsubscribe, doing so due to the sheer amount of e-mails they get from a company. Tied in second place, with 43% (some users unsubscribe for more than one reason), are the following reasons: information within the e-mail is no longer relevant for the user, and they either don’t recognize the brand or don’t remember signing up.

There are practices that brands and businesses can follow, to optimize their Email Marketing campaign. The most important ones are:

• Personalized Messages
• Mobile Optimization
• Shareable E-mails
• Videos & Animations
• Compelling Subjects

Unique e-mails

Personalizing the e-mails sent to a user makes these e-mails not seem like automated messages, sent by machines. This is something users and customers can easily understand as technology evolves, and the years go by. Thanks to new technology, however, real-time e-mail marketing allows brands to send personalized messages that cater to the specific user, without much effort.

Mobile Optimization

In the era of “on-the-go” Internet surfing and e-mail handling, thanks to mobile devices, optimizing its e-mails for hand-held devices is vital for brands. Display and presentation are 50% of any ad campaign, and e-mails are included in that “rule”. Negating the need for zooming-in and offering easy-to-use forms is extremely important for Email Marketing.

Sharing is fundamental

Brands and businesses not only target subscribed users, but they also target their friends, indirectly. Interesting content and/or helpful information will likely be shared from users, and making e-mails shareable to social media will increase the quality of user experience, and increase the reach of an e-mail.

Presentation counts

As stated above, display and presentation play a vital role in any ad, e-mail, or not. However, e-mails give the options of including videos and/or animated content more easily than say a billboard ad. Including animations and video content in an e-mail allows businesses to please the user with something beautiful, that will make this ad “stay” with them, as something different from generic walls of text.

The subject is the essence of the e-mail

Last, but certainly not least, brands should be very careful of the Subject of their e-mails. According to a study published by Yes, Marketing, in 2017, consumers open e-mails with personalized subject lines at a 50% higher rate compared to e-mails without personalized subject lines. The subject of an e-mail is the first thing a user sees before opening the e-mail, in essence, it is the flagship of each e-mail, and should be crafted in an attractive, and personalized way.

Summary

Email Marketing is far from “dead”, and we doubt it will ever be. Since e-mail is part of every-day life for humans that have constant Internet access and/or work virtually anywhere, it is safe to assume -as it has already been the case- that Email Marketing will keep changing forms, adapting to the needs and trends of each era. However, it will remain a constant, since it is an ad practice that has multiple benefits and very few nuances for subscribed users. Like in the case of SEO, Email Marketing is just evolving, and on top of that, it is a vital advertising “weapon” in the arsenal of small businesses that do not have budgets that allow them to promote heavily on social media.

Tags: e-mail, Email Marketing, Marketing, Personalized e-mails, Social Media Marketing