Email Marketing Produces Highest ROI

Email marketing is the most effective, least expensive and the earliest of all digital marketing channels. Email is the most widely used form of digital marketing. Well over 45 trillion emails are send every year, whereas the total number of emails sent out daily, stands at more than 210 billion. This figure far out numbers the total daily tweets and blog posts combined. Surprisingly, email marketing is one of the least used by among all the channels by digital marketers, but yet it is one of the channels that produces the highest return on investment.

Email marketing is an amazing digital marketing tool and it is quite unique as well, because, it is the most controlled platform among other digital marketing channels. To engage in email marketing, you are required to generate a mailing list, which must be built-up from opt-in subscribers who must grant you permission, before you can start to send them emails or any marketing campaign in form of a newsletter, product updates, video streaming, personalized messages or eBooks.

Email marketing allows you to establish an inter-personal relationship between the subscriber and your company, and subscribers have the free will to opt-out whenever they choose. Email marketing is one of the least expensive forms of digital marketing, and it is automated to allow users schedule their campaigns in such a way that it does not require constant attention, thereby allowing you time to focus on other aspects of your digital marketing strategies.

What is Email Marketing?

Having mentioned some of the benefits of email marketing, iit important to understand what email marketing really is about, as well as what the requirements are to start an email marketing campaign. Email Marketing is a form of marketing whereby an advertiser offers a bait in form of freebies, in exchange for subscription to a mailing list, which allows the advertiser to send product updates, newsletters, and other marketing campaigns to subscribers via email.


By definition, email marketing is a process through which a business entity promotes or solicit patronage by email distribution of adverts, newsletters and content to a targeted audience who grant their permission. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach target audiences directly, without the usual crowd associated with the other channels.

Email Marketing Tools

To start an email marketing campaign, there are certain tools you will require and they are as fellows – firstly, you need a landing page with opt-in subscription form, to enable users to build an email distribution list. Secondly, you must have an email distribution tool that allows users to generate email marketing campaign and automate email messages to suit their schedule. Thirdly, creating a content for email campaigns, which may take the form of a newsletter, eBook, video streaming or personalized messages to subscribers.

Email marketers follows some very strict rules, and it is crucial to know that most free email providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and others, do not allow subscribers to use their platforms to distribute email-marketing messages because of the legal implications. Publishers of opt-in landing page and email distribution tools, also prohibit the use of non-direct domain email addresses for distribution purposes.

Some of the Challenges of Email Marketing

It is fundamental to mention that, jus as email marketing has many advantages, so does it equally have quite a few disadvantages as well, which includes the following:

1.    Building a Mailing List

The success of an emailing marking campaign depends largely on the ability to maintain a substantially large list of subscribers. The task of generating a mailing list is one of the most challenging aspects of email marketing. Getting subscribers to opt-in requires tactfulness on the part of the advertiser, who must device ways to create a bait or provide freebies that is attractive enough to lure people to subscribe to their services.

2.    Content Curation

Creating compelling content is a vital part of email marketing, which is capable of making or marring your email marketing campaign. The knowledge of how to choose the appropriate content type for each campaign is of utmost value, but packaging the content in such a manner that it provides quality, short but precise information to the audience, is what creates the enthusiasm and attract for people to subscribe to your mailing list.

3.    Regular Update

For an email marketing campaign to be successful, such a campaign must be regular and sustainable for a long period of time. The fastest way to discourage subscribers and make them unsubscribe from your list, is to send the same message repeatedly. Each message sent out must be fresh and interesting to retain the your subscribers. 

Email marketing has several great features that makes it unique and  outstanding in many ways, especially in the areas of Return On Investment (ROI) and programmability.  

Profitability

According to Email Monday, email marketing averages an ROI of $38 for every $1 spent, and Mailigen report shows that for 89% of marketers, email serves as the primary channel for lead generation. In a survey conducted by Econsultancy, three-quarters of companies agree that email offers "excellent" to "good" ROI. A recent Pew Research Center report, shows that Email top the list of important tools for workers who use the Internet, with email accounting for 61% above Internet users of 54%. 
 

Dynamic and Programmatic

With email marketing, users can target specific audience, send them birthday cards, wedding anniversary messages, and remind them of stocking of their favourite products. This is one of the key features of email marketing, which makes it attractive for companies looking to building inter-personal relationships with their customers.

Conclusion

All of the analytics points to the fact that email marketing requires the lowest cost among all the channels and it is highly profitable, sustainable and effective. Any digital marketer, content curator, social media manager, blogger etc. that knows how efficacious email marketing performs, would not hesitate to include it as the major channels in their digital marketing mix.