Email marketing has come a long way since AOL laid the foundations for what Is now one of the most ubiquitous forms of communication back in 1999. Although email hasn’t changed too much since it’s initial conception, it continues to evolve.
Today, global email users amount to virtually half the entire planets population. Although this may not be fully accurate considering users have duplicate accounts, this figure is expected to grow steadily. (Statista, 2018).
It is a common misconception that email is dying out and being replaced by social media. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Email isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Email is evolving
Despite the fact that more efficient forms of communication have arisen for both the workplace and for personal matters, because of the noise that is social media, the signal is often lost and the e-mail inbox has become a virtual sanctuary.
There’s a myth that people don’t like being marketed by email. Of course, consumers hate being spammed and receiving unsolicited emails, irrelevant email. Thankfully, this myth can be dispelled with actual data. 49% of consumers said that they would like to receive promotional emails from their favorite brands on a weekly basis.
Notice the frequency because this is one of the heaviest weighing factors that deters consumers. Adobe’s 2018 Consumer Email Survey revealed that what people find most annoying about marketing emails is frequency, followed by emails that are too long or poorly written. (Adobe, 2018).
Mass personalization at scale
Personalization works wonders for email, but there needs to be a balance between coming across as helpful and being creepy. People want their privacy to be respected. In fact, the Adobe study revealed that 16% of consumers stated that too much personalization “is creepy.”
Considering the email inbox is like a virtual private space, it goes without saying that you need to be respectful when you’re in someone’s home. In the context of privacy, this means tailoring the message in a subtle way without inserting too much private information.
Research by DNA Half of marketers (50%) are now confident their organization can calculate ROI. Marketers reported that the estimated ROI for email marketing rose to $32 this year for every $1 spent – a $2 increase from £30 in 2016.
The benefits of email marketing for businesses are indisputable. However, in order to fully actualize the potential ROI, you need a well-thought-out email marketing strategy.
With all the platforms that your business is venturing in (considering that being fully active on any platform is virtually a full-time job), executing on an email marketing strategy might seem like a daunting task.
If you can’t afford to invest extra hours or headcount, the answer to this is mass personalization at scale.
Simple, effective automation
A few years ago, generation of personalized content required much more effort on the company side. Now, marketing automation is much less costly and easy to implement.
The trend in abandoned carts from 2006 to 2017 has not been encouraging. Statistics from Statista show that while in 2016 59.8% of shoppers abandoned their cart, in 2017 the number had risen to 69.23%. That’s a 15% increase! (Statista, 2017).
In the eCommerce space, automating recovery of abandoned carts is your first easy win. If you’re only sending 1 email, note that sending 3 reminder emails instead of a single email has shown to be 69% more effective. Recovering abandoned carts has never been easier and it will really have a substantial impact on your bottom line!
An interesting point to note in the research done by Statista is that there is a clear correlation between abandoned carts and small screens.
Mobile has the highest abandonment rates, with 85% of all transactions ending without a sale. Tablets converted sales 80% of the time time, while Desktops performed best with a rate of 73%.
Email Marketing Infographic Sum Up
Is email marketing less valuable than it was a decade ago? Maybe. All successful platforms eventually become over saturated with marketers who deter users. But not many platforms have stood the test of time like email has. These statistics have proven that your business would be missing out on a serious opportunity if your business is not fully capitalizing on email marketing. If you haven’t got it all figured out yet, worry not – it doesn’t take much to get yourself on track.
Stefanos F. Bournias is a content marketer and an eCommerce entrepreneur. After building and selling his first online businesses, Stefanos learned to grow and sell a business. His primary areas of focus include: product sourcing, business strategy, marketing, general management & operational activities. Ever since executing in these areas and learning as he goes, Stefanos began writing on SaaS, Start-ups, E-commerce & Marketing.
