As other digital marketing channels have grown in popularity (think Instagram, Google, Facebook) and begun to dominate the marketing strategy conversation, I am often asked: “is email marketing still important?”
In short, the answer is yes.
Keep reading for the longer version: 5 reasons why email marketing should be your top marketing priority in 2022.
In comparison to other digital marketing tools, email marketing is unmatched for cost-effectiveness and ROI. If you want to connect with your potential customers and increase sales or leads affordably, creating a good email strategy is the place to start. Email is a valuable channel that can be used by both B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) companies.
The statistics show that 64% of small businesses use email marketing to reach customers, but I believe that number should be much higher.
Email marketing is one of the best ways to grow your business. Whether you’re an accountant for wellbeing businesses, a life coach for divorced women, running a yoga studio, or selling handmade candles, email marketing should be at the top of your agenda. If you are looking to engage your audience, generate leads, boost sales or increase repeat purchases, email marketing will help you to achieve your 2022 business goals.
Keep reading to discover why you should focus on email marketing in 2022.
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5 reasons why email marketing should be top of your priorities
Everyone* uses email – and checks it regularly
How many people do you know who don’t use email?
I’d hazard a guess that the answer is not many.
Consider what you need to shop online, to create a social media profile or to receive banking statements – an email address is top of the list.
In the last UK-wide study, email was used by 86% of adults in 2019, more than any other internet activity. Using email was 6% higher than the next most frequently performed internet activity of finding information about goods and services (78% of UK adults).
Globally, more than half of the world’s population uses email – with an estimated 4.1 billion email accounts active worldwide. Email penetration beats social media, with more people having an email address than a social media account (3.48 billion).
Even more importantly, people actively check their emails meaning your email is likely to be seen – with 58% of adults checking their email first thing in the morning and then spending 10-60 minutes a week looking at promotional emails.
Email is a brilliant way to reach target and potential customers, allowing you to provide them with special offers, bespoke content and new products direct to their inboxes.
*almost everyone
Great reach vs social media
Whilst you can’t guarantee someone on your email list will open every one of your emails, you can be fairly certain it will hit their email inbox at the very least.
With consistent changes to the algorithms, reach on Facebook and Instagram is becoming even more difficult for businesses on social media. Organic reach on social media has been decreasing consistently since 2014, with social media businesses prioritising paid-for content.
Having 3,000 email subscribers and 3,000 Facebook fans is not the same thing.
The average email open rate is between 15-25%, however, I will caveat and say this varies greatly by your industry and your email list, whereas the average reach for an organic Facebook post is 5.2%.
If we consider an average email open rate of 20%, an email to 3000 subscribers would be seen by 600 people whereas a Facebook post to 3000 subscribers would be seen by an average of 156. In this scenario, email helps you reach 4 times more of your audience.
When considering click-through rates, email also performs better with an average click-through rate of about 3.5% compared to a much lower average click-through rate of 0.07% on Facebook.
Email marketing far outperforms its social media competitors in terms of reach. And can be improved further by focusing on writing engaging subject lines and using appropriate personalisation to improve email open rates.
Email subscribers have longevity
Yes, email lists can take time to build.
Perhaps you will need to create an email opt-in or an offer to encourage people to sign up to your list, but once they’ve signed up – they will most likely stay engaged for a long time.
For over 40 years, email has been a form of communication and people are very used to sending and receiving emails. Potential and existing customers signed up to your email list become invested in your business, and look forward to seeing what you are doing with 61% of people saying they look forward to receiving weekly promotional emails. A good email marketing strategy is a very effective tool for customer retention, helping to keep your existing customers engaged and your business at the front of their minds.
Email marketing is known to be the best channel for ROI
I’ll get straight into this one: on average, businesses will see a 44:1 return on investment when utilising email marketing, this translates to £44 for every £1 invested in email marketing. In fact, the Data and Marketing Association (DMA) has named email the top digital channel for ROI.
Almost all email marketing tools offer you the ability to track what happens after you have sent out your campaign. Whether you use Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign (my favourite) or MailerLite, or any of the other platforms available, you’ll be able to track delivery rates, unsubscribe rates, click-through rates, open rates and more. All of these metrics give you an understanding of how your email campaigns are working and should be added to the list of metrics you monitor monthly – alongside a monthly website review.
And as one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies, email marketing can help you reach thousands of customers for pennies per customer. The cost per click on email marketing can be very low when using an effective marketing strategy. For those on a budget, there are even some free email marketing tools that can be used (however these tend to limit the metrics you can see).
You don’t need lots of staff to send effective email campaigns, if you want to reach more people for less money, email marketing is a fantastic option. It is a low-risk marketing strategy that can be used to grow your business without an initial large financial investment.
Personalisation helps you to send emails as unique as your customers
The ability to personalise emails is a strong selling point for email marketing, building a unique connection to your potential customers and creating a one-to-one feel as opposed to the one-to-many connection of a social media post.
Whilst you may think of personalisation in email marketing as simply addressing users by their first name in the opening address, there is so much more you can do to personalise your emails and your customers journey.
Segmenting customers and potential customers into email marketing lists can help you target them more effectively and create a more personalised experience for them. A simple way to start is to create a welcome series for new subscribers, you could also segment customers by those who have purchased a certain product and then create an email series to inform them as to how to get the most use out of this product.
There are many other ways to personalise emails including:
- Offer personalised recommendations for related products or services, if the person is an existing customer
- Incorporate an email subscriber’s information into the content you send them, segment by country or city
- Tailor send times and email frequency dependent on the subscriber’s behaviour
Statistics show that the personalised approach works, with an 8% increase in open rates when an email is personalised and a 14% increase in click-through rate (CTR) when the subscriber has received a personalised email. Perhaps most importantly, 10% is the average conversion increase when a personalised email has been received.
You don’t have to use personalisation all the time for it to be effective, but the ability to create a better user experience for your potential and existing customers through email personalisation is another reason why email should be top of your priorities for 2022!
Why email marketing should be your top marketing priority in 2022
As you’ve seen above, email marketing drives tangible, measurable results.
A good email marketing strategy enables you to; communicate with a wide number of people, effectively reaching a large percentage of your audience who will stick around for a while, generating the best return-on-investment in digital marketing, whilst making your new and existing customers feel special through personalisation.
From online programme sales, to coaching client enquiries and product purchases, email marketing is the channel that you can rely on to generate revenue and increase your business success this year and in years to come.
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