Is Email Marketing Dead? Absolutely Not

A brief history of email marketing

Electronic mail began life in the 70s. Email marketing started at the tail end of that decade. That’s over 40 years of use as a marketing tool. From the 80s and into the 90s, email adoption skyrocketed. That increase in email users also created a dramatic increase in email marketing.

Over the years, email marketing strategies have changed, grown, and adapted to the times. That’s why this form of digital marketing is still around and still very much worth consideration as a marketing tool for any business.

The decline of email marketing

People have predicted the death of email for a long time. Some thought other technologies would replace it. For example, many assumed faxing would become the main way people would market, especially because it facilitated the evolution of direct mail marketing.

But as digital technology and the internet grew, a decline in email marketing followed. Other digital marketing channels sprung up, and with it, new ideas on how to market effectively in the new digital age took hold.

Email marketing didn’t go away, but it had to share space with other marketing methods, like social media marketing, content marketing, and inbound marketing. But while other forms of digital marketing have risen in popularity throughout the years, email marketing stood strong as a great way to reach customers and grow your business.

Why people say email marketing is dead

Email marketing has suffered quite a few setbacks over the years. One of the biggest issues became the proliferation of spam emails. Email providers struggled to keep up with spam by developing filtering technologies and banning bad actors from sending emails.

Unfortunately, spam played a large role in the lessening of email marketing as a viable solution for some businesses. People were wary of emails, didn’t fully trust them, and received far too many of them.

In addition, old-style cookie-cutter marketing emails didn’t seem to speak to individuals, so why would anyone bother with them? The emails people were receiving lacked personalization, and more often than not, they ended up never being opened.

During all this, email marketing took a hit as businesses leaned on other forms of marketing to promote their products and services.

How these factors have affected the perception of email marketing

The rise of instant messaging and social media attracted the attention of people far more readily than email. Marketers, of course, started spending a great deal of time, effort, and energy figuring out how to leverage these other platforms.

Many saw email marketing as a waste of time or something to use but did not put any real effort into it. Marketers also didn’t want people to look at their brands the same way they would look at the average spammer.

Still, some marketers figured out ways to continue using email as their primary marketing tool. They took what people didn’t like about email messages and found solutions.

In the midst of all this, email technology began to grow. People gained more power over what they would see in their inboxes. This helped a great deal with email marketing because it meant marketers could fine-tune their email offerings to add personalization and attract the people that wanted what they were offering.

Marketers learned email wasn’t just a marketing channel they could continue to use but a necessity that could serve as a cornerstone of their marketing efforts.

Advancements in email marketing

Over time, email marketing has had to adapt to the changes in technology. As technology never sits still, email has advanced to remain viable as a marketing method.

Those advancements have made email marketing one of the best digital marketing methods available. So, what do these advancements in email marketing look like?

Personalization and automation

Technology makes it ridiculously easy to both personalize and automate the email marketing process. A lot of email marketing technology will allow for a high level of personalization far beyond just inserting a person’s name into the email.

You can speak to individuals personally when you combine modern email marketing technology with modern analytics data. For example, the process of segmentation allows marketers to separate their mailing lists into categories based on various parameters.

By creating personalized content, email marketers are able to connect with subscribers on a much deeper level, increasing open rates and driving customers to their websites.

In this way, marketers can target a specific target audience, and email marketing automation can make sure that only those audiences receive the relevant marketing message. With the right email automation software, businesses can create more personalized content, keep their leads engaged, and boost revenue.

Various other technologies and methods exist to make emails more personal and easier to use at scale.

Responsive design and mobile optimization

One of the main benefits of email marketing is that emails are mobile-friendly. With most people using their devices to go online, participate in social media, and check emails, it makes sense that marketers have also made high use of mobile platforms. The number of mobile users has skyrocketed, and businesses have needed to adjust their marketing strategies to reflect that.

In fact, the use of mobile devices to go online has grown so prevalent that many have shifted to mobile-first design solutions. Mobile-first means that instead of dealing with a desktop design first, software and application designers have started to prioritize mobile design.

Integration with other marketing channels

Beyond the general benefits of email marketing, it’s important to note this marketing method works great with other types of marketing channels as well. A multichannel marketing strategy gives you a greater reach, access to more potential prospects, an increase in brand awareness, and the potential for higher conversion rates.

A multichannel approach to digital marketing works best, and email can help to bridge the gap between marketing efforts.

For example, you can use social media to find prospects who will sign up for your email marketing campaigns. Then, you can use email marketing to connect prospects to your social media platforms.

You can share your email messages as social media posts or you can include your social media posts as a feature in your email messages. The point is, email marketing can do a lot for your marketing efforts, whether it’s your primary marketing channel or one that serves your main marketing channel.

The effectiveness of email as a channel

You don’t have to look far to learn that email marketing works. Statista reports email marketing revenue in 2020 reached 7.5 billion dollars and that over 80% of industry experts use email as part of their marketing efforts.

Statistics such as the open rate, conversion rate, and click-through rates can vary based on the industry. However, it’s good to know that many people actually prefer email communications.

Most people sign up for or opt-in to receive promotional emails from brands and businesses they want to see more of, further proving the fact that email marketing is not dead.

How to build an effective email marketing strategy

While email marketing makes for a great marketing strategy, you still need to make sure it's effective. There are a few ways you build an effective email marketing strategy, such as by:

• Targeting the right audience
• Sending personalized emails
• Making sure the email is mobile-friendly
• Crafting compelling subject lines
• Keeping things simple
• Use aesthetically pleasing email templates and designs
• Making sure recipients explicitly want your emails (see GDPR)
• Optimizing for deliverability

Starting with these basics will make your email marketing attempts that much more effective.

Tips for creating high-converting email campaigns

Outside of the basic tips to boost effectiveness, there are a few more things you can do to take your email marketing campaigns to the next level. To create a successful email campaign, incorporate the following tips into your next marketing campaign:

• Write for the web (brief paragraphs, logical flow, good first line)
• Make sure your sales email is clean and clear
• Create content for an ideal prospect (build buyer personas)
• Always include a call to action (CTA)
• Run email A/B tests
• Have an email marketing plan
• Pay attention to and lean heavily on KPIs and analytics

Testing and paying attention to statistics will give you the ability to fine-tune your efforts as you go. What converts well for one segment may not convert well for another. Look at what’s happening and make adjustments until you find the ideal way to present your marketing message to your audiences.

The current state of email marketing

A simple online search will reveal that individuals have pondered the demise of email for years, with queries such as "Is email marketing dead in 2022, 2023, 2024," and so on, repeatedly appearing.

But the truth is, email marketing is not dead. In fact, it’s a widely popular and powerful marketing tool used by small and large businesses across the planet.

When used with other marketing tools, you can do a lot more with email marketing than you probably think. But in order to use email marketing to its fullest advantage, you need the right resources, which you can get with Mailchimp. Mailchimp is an email marketing platform that offers a plethora of tools specifically for email marketing.

With a modern service like Mailchimp that understands how to make the best use of email marketing and offers all the tools you need to create a successful campaign, you can’t go wrong. Is email marketing dead? Nope. It’s alive and well, and it’s a marketing channel you shouldn’t ignore.