Since its inception in the 1970s, email has been a cost-effective and simple channel of communicating with a wide audience. The first ever marketing email went out for Digital Equipment Corp. in 1978, and it generated a return on investment (ROI) of $13 million. With results like that, companies started to utilize email more and more as a part of their marketing strategies. 

Today, nearly every single company - and every successful one - uses email in some way as a part of their marketing strategy. Why, though? Why do businesses continue to use email if so many other more modern channels are available through social media? 

Short answer - it works! 

Not only is email still one of the most effective marketing strategies out there, but it’s probably one of the most cost-effective strategies, too. Let’s talk about email marketing, how to avoid ending up in the spam folders of your customers, and why, decades after its invention, it still provides the best ROI. 

Email Statistics  

For starters, numbers don’t lie. Across multiple studies, email marketing comes out on top as the marketing strategy with perhaps the best ROI. 

• 63% of millennials report that they are likely to make a purchasing decision based on a marketing email. 

• 59% of marketers say that email is their company’s greatest ROI (HubSpot). 

• By 2027, over half of the world’s population (approx. 4.6 billion people) are predicted to use email on a regular basis. 

• Email is the third most effective marketing strategy according to B2B marketers, only behind word-of-mouth and seminars/webinars. 

• 60% of consumers report a preference for hearing from brands through email over any other marketing channels.

Despite these numbers, some will argue that email marketing is a hallmark of a bygone era. They’ll argue that younger generations do not use email in the same way it was used in the past, or that email campaigns are likely to just end up in someone’s junk or spam mailbox. 

To the former point - this simply isn’t true! According to one study, 25% of people ages 18-35 check their email first thing in the morning, sometimes before they even get out of bed. 

As for the notion that email marketing only ends up as junk or spam, it is true that a lot of email marketing gets ignored. Quite frankly, that’s because it isn’t strategic! 

Keep reading, and we’ll talk about some simple ways to make sure your emails get read by your audience. 

Best Practices

Personalization

With any marketing, your guiding principle should be to know your audience! Personalizing your message to your audience can work to establish a sense of familiarity between your business and your customers, increasing their trust in you and the likelihood that they will make a purchase. 

One simple way to personalize your marketing campaigns is through using a template that lets you insert the customer’s name as the salutation to the email, instead of a generic opening. Most email marketing platforms will have a feature that allows you to seamlessly add this feature to your campaigns. 

Other ways to personalize your email campaigns include: 

• Use customer browsing data: Cookies can track a customer’s browsing data on your website, showing you what items they viewed or what items they left in their cart. Emails that utilize this and remind customers of abandoned browsing sessions can lead to conversions later down the line. 

• Send emails from a person, not from a company: CRM platform HubSpot conducted a study where they sent the same email to two segments of their audience, except one email was sent from HubSpot, and the other was sent with the name of a member of the marketing team. The result? 292 more people clicked on the email addressed from a real person! 

• Analyze your audience demographics: Understanding your customer base can help you make intentional and informed choices for the copy in your email. For example, if your audience is primarily 35-44 year olds, you probably don’t want to use cultural references or slang commonly used by Gen Z! Analyze your audience demographics, and tailor your message accordingly. 

Segmentation 

Segmentation splits up your audience based on different factors such as age, gender, location, and purchasing preferences. Segmenting your audience can be a useful strategy for many reasons. 

Segmentation helps you build relationships with your customer base. If you send emails with appropriate messaging to the right people, your customers will feel as though your service or product meets their needs. If you meet your customers’ needs, they are more likely to trust you, and if your audience trusts you, they are more likely to purchase your service or product!

Segmentation also aids in personalizing your email marketing strategy by allowing you to target customers based on their purchasing habits. If you send the same email campaign to people with widely different purchasing habits, you might win a sale from one of them… but probably not both of them. Separating your audience by purchasing habits allows you to show returning customers new and exciting products or services without overwhelming one-time customers. 

Similarly, you can group segments based on their engagement with past email marketing. This allows you to perfectly tailor the frequency of your marketing without being pushy and without your customers forgetting about you. For example, let’s say that you send out an email every day to your entire customer base. You might notice that:

• 4% of your customers open every email

• 30% open two emails a week

• 36% open the emails once a week

• 17% open one to two emails a month

• 13% don’t open them at all

With this breakdown of engagement, you might be able to interpret that approximately two-thirds of your audience will open one to two emails a week from you; however, you might also notice that most of the remaining third of your audience is much less engaged with your email campaigns.

If you send too many emails to your audience, members of your audience who are less interested in what you’re selling might completely disengage if they find your marketing to be overwhelming or spammy. By segmenting your audience based on their engagement, you can make sure to get necessary information on sales, new products, and new services to loyal customers without losing less dedicated customers. 

Automation

Now that your email marketing campaigns are personalized and segmented to help you effectively reach your audience… How can you make sending them out simple? 

Easy - automation! 

Automation allows you to set certain emails based on set parameters. When utilized correctly, your customers will get certain emails based on their engagement with past marketing, the release of new products and services on your website, their browsing history on your website, and even when they fill out certain forms on your website. 

There are two main kinds of email automation: scheduling and triggers. 

Scheduling

Scheduled emails are most effective when you need to get a message out to your audience at a certain time. For example, if you’re launching a new service on your website, you can schedule emails to go out to your audience a month before, a week before, three days before, and the day of the launch to build up excitement, increase awareness of the launch, and improve odds of engagement.

Additionally, scheduled emails allow you to send your campaigns at a time that your audience is most likely to see your email. 

Let’s say your time zone is Eastern Standard Time (EST), but the largest segment of your audience lives in a Central Standard Time (CST) zone. If you send out an email blast to your entire audience at 10 AM in your time zone, that segment of your audience will receive it at 12 PM, when a lot of them will be taking their lunch break and NOT looking at their email. 

When you utilize scheduling, you can create well-crafted, clean, and clear messaging  well in advance that reaches your audience at just the right time. 

Triggers

While scheduling emails are time-sensitive, email triggers go out based on certain behaviors in your audience, which allows you to further personalize your email marketing campaigns. You can set triggers to send to customers when they fill out a form, add items to their cart, comment on a forum on your website, and more! 

The use of triggers as a part of your email marketing strategy works to keep new and returning customers intrigued in your business without overwhelming them. Additionally, triggered email campaigns can help you capture information for first-time customers.

Keep Email on the Throne - Where It Belongs! 

Just because it’s been around for a few decades, don’t discount email marketing as one of your most effective tools for growing your audience, creating long-time customers, and generating sales! If you take the time to learn and understand email marketing best practices, you’ll be a pro in no time. 

With a little bit of savvy, some practice, and the right strategies, you can create email marketing that truly works and gives you the return on investment that you’ve been waiting for. Get out there, and get out of your audience’s spam folders!