With every new year, it seems as though there’s a new slew of marketing analysts proclaiming the death of email marketing. As each new year comes and goes, however, email marketing as a platform remains strong, showing no objective signs of stopping. Will 2017 be the final year of email marketing’s reign? Probably not, all indications considered.
Email Marketing Provides a Direct Link With a Consumer Base
Admittedly, email marketing is a less vivid experience than most social media platforms. In this case, however, that’s a very good thing. “Think about it,” says Huffington Post contributor Sarah Peterson. “You check your email every day – likely far more than once per day. Let’s try once per hour. When you’re in your inbox, you’re being communicated with directly (and privately), without the distractions of Facebook, other search engine listings, or notifications. It’s just you and that email.” This gives marketers uninterrupted access to their audience’s attention. This helps sales as well as engagement. “Humans have the attention span of a goldfish, so you don’t want to compete with a million distractions for your audience’s attention,” offers Peterson.” Email marketing helps with that.”
Email Marketing is Still Among the Best Tools for Generating High ROIs
As the statistics show, email marketing comes with a highly attractive return on investment. “You get more bang for your buck with email marketing than almost any other type of marketing,” writes Peterson. “In fact, stats show that email marketing has return of 44.25x. For every $100 you sink into email marketing for your business you can expect an average of $4,425 back. Not bad, right?” Of course, that number is thanks to the business relationship that companies built with their audience. A marketers email list is one of their biggest assets due to the high average ROI as well as other factors.
Email Marketing Continues to Drive a Considerably High Amount of Sales
Email marketing continues to impress when it comes to inciting disproportionate sales numbers. “In fact, just two years ago email marketing brought in 25.1% of all Black Friday sales online which was more than any other single marketing channel, like social media marketing or paid,” offers Peterson. “In 2015, email marketing performed equally as well on the biggest shopping day of the year, bringing in another 25%+ of sales. And that makes sense, because…”
An Email List is in a Marketer’s Complete Control
While marketers can influence important factors like their search engine rankings, they cannot fully control them simply because they do not own them. “Google’s main goal is to make money — like any company’s,” says Peterson. “And the way Google makes money from it’s search function is through display ads. Google doesn’t want you to rely on your email list to make money. It wants you to have to rely on paying them for ads. No matter how amazing having a strong email list is for you, it’s bad for Google for you to be independent of them.” Social media platforms are also essentially transitioning to algorithmic feeds, which means that marketers can’t wholly control who sees their posts on their Facebook page anymore. Email marketing, however, is a marketer’s own virtual room. They are directly linked to their consumer base, and they are in full control of how all interactions are carried out. “If anyone tries to tell you that email marketing is dead in 2017,” Peterson writes, “they’re wrong. If anything, email marketing is still alive and well and will continue to conquer all other forms of marketing available next year and beyond.”
