Email Marketing - and why it's still Incredibly Effective

Reading: 5 mins

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Intro
We are living in a fast-moving and exciting digital age of 5G networks, Influencers, IoT, AR and the Metaverse. In these dynamic times, it's easy to get seduced by the latest trends when planning a marketing campaign and certainly, new technologies are providing plenty of innovative and successful ways to reach your customer base. But often, the most effective game plan is to stick with a tried and trusted form of communication channel as an integral part of your multi-channel marketing strategy - email.

Email may be perceived as an old-fashioned communication tactic, but it is still a vital one. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.
Here are some eye-popping statistics to show why:

• About 306 billion emails will be sent in 2022. This number is expected to reach 361 billion by the end of 2024.
  So even though there are now more varied ways to reach customers than before, email is still one of the most popular communication channels.

• 89% of marketers use email as the primary channel for generating leads.

• Email marketing ROI is 3600% (€36 for every €1 spent).

• 37% of respondents name email as the most effective channel for customer loyalty and retention, while websites were named by 13% and social media by only 11%.

• 60% of consumers say they’ve bought something as the result of a marketing email. That's in contrast to 12.5 percent of consumers who say they would use the ‘buy’ button on social media.

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Why Email?  
There are plenty of solid reasons for using email: 
 
It's an effective way to keep customers informed and connected. 
Email is a powerful communication channel for helping brands staying connected to their customers. People like to get emails from brands they know and trust in order to stay up to date with new products and offers.  
This is especially true for e-commerce brands where e-coupon discounts play a significant role in customers preferring email. Email marketing is an excellent way to reach the expanding number of online bargain hunters. Returning customers are the biggest source of revenue (as opposed to prospective ones) and a returning customer has already invested into your brand. 
Email automation now gives more flexibility and power to campaigns. It means it is far easier for companies to easily follow-up to win back an abandoned cart or engage new leads. 
But email doesn't just have to sell something. It can inform about upcoming or past events, give insights into a brand's culture or just remind a customer they are a valued customer. 
 
It allows brands to deliver a complete message with all relevant details
Email marketing can be used to deliver relevant content to consumers. An email is not just a snack (like an sms is), it's a full meal and many customers appreciate meaningful and engaging content if it is relevant to their interests. We'll look at this in more depth later.  
 
Email is a direct way to reach mobile customers.
More and more people are using mobiles as their primary device, but email remains one of the most reliable ways for a company to reach a mobile without the need to investing in new technology or software. In the US, more than 50% of owners access their emails via their phones and another sizable proportion use tablets.  
Therefore, email is better for mobile marketing than SMS as they are free for the consumer and they work on mobile devices other than phones. 
Text messages are also hindered by lack of space for content and poorer visual impact. 
 
It's easy to integrate into other marketing tactics.
The idea of a campaign that relies solely on email does seem old-fashioned but marketers are becoming innovative and using new methods to reinvigorate the traditional mass email. Email marketing today is increasingly versatile. Armed with good CRM technology and a skilful strategist, email messages can be simple or complex and deliver precise information. Combined with a cross-channel marketing strategy, email becomes a crucial part of the marketing toolbox.  
 
In a nutshell, email marketing is easy, effective, and inexpensive. With marketing budgets constantly being squeezed, it makes sense to use it.

Photo by Sticker Mule on Unsplash

Personalize it

Email is also easy to personalize – a trend that is becoming increasingly common and effective. 71% of consumers say a personalized element would positively influence their decision to open and read brand emails. 
Personalized subject lines have a 50% higher opening rate and there are many other similar tactics to grab viewers' attention. 
Email personalization can be simple (such as using the viewer's name, country, birth date, etc) or more sophisticated with smart personalization which gives even more opportunities to create targeted, relevant emails which are more likely to make them take notice.

Content is King   
Emails can be made even more attractive and viewable by having content in them that viewers want to engage with and one of the most preferred forms of content is video.  
It's easy to understand why – video is easy to digest, entertaining and visually stimulating – especially in short-form bites. Video can tap into the imagination of an audience that is increasingly used to absorbing information visually — this is something that text just often isn't capable of doing. Also, video gives you have a chance to make dense topics more understandable – hence the rise in popularity of explainer videos. Videos are great for stimulating emotions and that is so important for connecting with a customer.  
 
This graphic perfectly sums up the benefits that video can bring to an email campaign:  

Using video in email is ideal for a broad range of goals:
- Informing and educating
- Selling a product
- Building a community and brand loyalty
- Boosting brand awareness

And of course, if the video is personalized, it makes the customer experience even better...

Email + Video + Personalization = a perfect combination

You can see where this is going can't you...
Email is the delivery channel of choice for Motionlab. A customer's personalized video can also be sent using messaging apps like Whatsapp, Viber and chat but email meets all the criteria discussed above and that's why we still love it.

Video email marketing is such an effective strategy, especially if it's personalized when it becomes direct messaging on steroids. With a personalized subject line that includes the word 'video' (guaranteed to increase open rates), and a video embedded in a unique landing page and thumbnail, it's a simple, engaging and effective (and cost-effective) way of reaching thousands or millions of customers.

Danny Holman, Motionlab