Email - a powerful digital marketing tool

New statistics revealed that roughly 270 billion emails are sent worldwide each day, suggesting that 74 trillion are sent per year.

If I can only pick a couple of digital marketing tools to focus on for my start-up, email must be one of them. Email is not only a tool for communication but also a critical tool to support sales. As per a recent research, the email marketing came in at second place, only topped by Facebook. 

Email marketing can be used for getting referrals and direct sales with lower cost, which does not vary much regardless of where the customers located and how many customers you would like to reach out. One common way to communicate with customers is through order confirmation email. During the transaction process, the customers have a higher open rate for order confirmation email. This email confirms the purchase after the transaction completes. The customers are excited about their purchase. it’s a great time to add an additional offer for a complementary product or to ask for a referral. Emails with promotions and seeking for feedback after a recent purchase can have similar effect. According to the Direct Marketing Association, 66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a direct result of an email marketing message. The promotional emails are a powerful sale tool. Promotional content is perceived as relative and valuable information to the customers. 

Email is seen as the digital method of direct mail marketing. Comparing with direct mail, the email marketing material is convenient to make up and easy to store for longer period of time, with way lower costs. Based on the name list, the computer can effectively and efficiently compose personal emails. A lot of emails can send marketing messages directly to intended target in a personal way. Businesses can easily send the same message to a large number of customers. After sending the email, the software can keep a record of messages and replies, including details of when a message was received. 

There are apparently challenges of email marketing: 

1) Spam   

If the email aren’t targeted to the right people, the recipients who continue to receive the irrelevance content will not only delete the emails or unsubscribe the emails but also report them as spam. When a large number of emails was delivered to incorrect addresses, the bounce rate will also increase. The high bounce rate could also get the email tagged as a spammer. The emails will then end up in junk folders. 

2) Design 

Given that almost all customers access email over the phone, it is key to develop / design a mobile friendly version. Not everyone is going to be able to view images, PDF files or videos on different devices. Thus, optimizing different files for mobile is anther challenge. The small screens don’t always display the full text of subject lines, or open PDF files. The email may need to front load the subject lines with important words. Emails must be designed in a way that can appear across multiple devices and email servers. Poorly designed emails may not get delivered because certain spam keywords in the subject or some content of the email are likely to be filtered out by email software and internet service providers. 

3) Privacy 

In addition, the email marketing has to comply with privacy and data protection rules, and only target people who want to receive it.