The Advantages and Disadvantages of Email Marketing

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Key takeaways

• Email marketing can build brand awareness when you use a consistent tone, logo and colour scheme to make messages recognizable.
• Use email to share industry expertise, regularly sending useful content and product or offer announcements builds credibility.
• Email marketing is relatively low-cost and time-efficient, outsourcing can produce very high ROI.
• Key risks: messages easily get lost in crowded inboxes, can be marked as spam and may frustrate recipients if unsolicited, too frequent or hard to unsubscribe from.
• Effective email marketing takes effort and practice. Subject lines, body content and CTAs often require time to get right.
• Weigh these pros and cons to decide whether email marketing is the right channel for your business or if you need another plan.

Introduction

Many marketing experts out there claim that email marketing is the be-all and end-all of digital marketing strategies. While email marketing can be effective, it’s important to realize it’s just one way of many to build brand awareness and engage an audience.

It’s important to consider both sides of email marketing to determine whether it’s right for your business. 

“Like any marketing campaign, understanding the pros and cons of email marketing can mean the difference between successful and failed campaigns,” says Maya Devassy, contributor to Business2Community.

We’ve compiled the main pros and cons of email marketing to help you determine if it will benefit your company. Use these tips to determine whether it’s worth investing in this method or if you need another game plan.

The Advantages of Email Marketing

It Builds Brand Awareness

Staying consistent with the tone and colour scheme of your emails can greatly improve your brand recognition. Showcase your business’ personality with a unique, eye-catching design that is pleasing to the eye and recognizable. This will build up your brand awareness and allow you to reach your target market. 

When buyers recognize your business by a logo or colour scheme, they’re more likely to feel a connection to your brand. This makes them more likely to think of your brand when they arrive at the consideration stage of their buyer journey.

“This can result in consumers sharing your material if they think it’s good, which further promotes your brand, and it helps them recall your brand when they are ready to make a buying decision,” recommends Devassy.

It Establishes Industry Expertise

Email marketing is one of the easiest ways your business can share key information with many people at a time. This is a great way to become a thought leader in your industry and promote your company with confidence. 

When a business is able to establish themselves as an industry expert, they build up their brand credibility. This exposure can lead to the brand being recognized by buyers as a reputable, reliable source to find solutions.

“Email marketing allows you to share content that demonstrates your […] expertise in your specific industry […], it also gives you the opportunity to promote or announce a new product, service or limited-time special offer,” says Devassy.

It is Quick and Cost-Effective 

While many marketing techniques can be extremely costly, email marketing can be done for a relatively low price. What’s more, it really doesn’t take up much of your time. Especially if you’re savvy to the industry, you can achieve great email marketing with quite little effort. Even hiring an outside company to perform email marketing services can provide the highest ROIs of any marketing strategy.

The Disadvantages of Email Marketing

It Can Be Tough To Stand Out

One of the biggest challenges of email marketing is standing out amongst the competition. These days, you can more or less expect that your audience members are receiving dozens of emails each day. Unfortunately, because of this, most of these emails are likely to be considered spam, junk or irrelevant to their interests. 

It’s important to make sure you are creating quality content. Your posts should present simple, digestible content that is interesting to read, aesthetically pleasing and unique. Conduct market research by taking a look at your competitors’ efforts to see how they stand out amongst the noise.

“It’s very much possible that your marketing email may never be opened by consumers. [M]arketing emails can be seen as unimportant and deleted or caught in the spam folder and never seen by consumers,” advises Davassy.

It Can Frustrate Potential Clients

Inboxes are often plagued with waves of spam emails that have given email marketing a bad name amongst buyers. Many buyers complain about receiving emails they didn’t sign up for, getting too many emails or failing to easily unsubscribe.

Make sure to honor your subscriber lists and don’t go overboard on the length or consistency of your emails. Similarly, don’t make it a pain for recipients to unsubscribe from your content. Buyers will appreciate that you care about them enough to offer a non-intrusive way to learn about your business. 

“Unsolicited emails can leave a bad taste in a consumer’s mouth and make [them] consider your company less than reputable. [I]f an unsubscribe request isn’t taken care of immediately, your company’s image can be tarnished,” says Devassy.

It Takes Effort and Practice

The reality is that not all email marketing works. Just because you send an email, it doesn’t mean people will read it or that it will impact your audience. Try to remain patient when starting to incorporate emailing into your marketing strategy and understand that it’s a learning process.

“From the body content and CTA to the subject line […], creating quality email content consumers are interested in can be time consuming,” says Devassy.

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