Ding ding! You’ve got mail. Most people don’t realize that email was invented way back in 1965, but it wasn’t until the early 1990s that businesses started incorporating email communication.
Once Hotmail launched free web-based email services in 1996, everyone who had an internet connection (remember those beautifully melodic dial-ups??) could send and receive electronic mail. The future had arrived.
Today, email marketing is a huge resource for businesses across the globe. From single-operator start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, organizations of every size and in every industry use email to
- share information
- educate consumers
- announce new products
- and offer discounts.
And it works.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is just what it sounds like — using email to market your business, brand, products, and services to people who have signed up or opted-in to your email list.
You can use email marketing to
- Educate
- Entice
- Convert
- build loyalty
- fueling your sales engine and helping you get where you want to go.
There are a lot of elements that go into making an email marketing campaign successful. That means there are also a lot of components you or your marketing manager can play with to improve your click-through rate and boost conversions.
- Audience segmentation: It’s rare that all your consumers should be lumped into one email audience. You may get better results by segmenting your list, creating separate groups for new subscribers and existing customers and according to characteristics such as age, interest, and geographic location
- Subject lines: A great subject line hints at the included content while adding personalization that speaks to each audience segment and even each recipient. Playing with punctuation, emojis, and length can garner dramatically different results.
- CTAs: Calls to action are the bits of content or buttons that tell consumers what steps to take to get a desired result, such as “Shop Now” or “Book a demo to see our software in action.” Sometimes varying your CTAs can affect your conversion rate.
What are the success rates for email marketing?
The success rates for email marketing differ from industry to industry.
- For instance, government-related emails have the highest average open rate at 28.77%.
- Emails from businesses in the e-commerce sector are on the lower end with an average open rate of 15.68%, well below the overall average 21.33%.
- Still, that overall average of around 21% means that one out of every five marketing emails gets that all-important click — not bad!
Furthermore, 21% of emails are opened within an hour of delivery and when it comes to conversion emails work better than social media channels like Facebook and Twitter.
Is email marketing still effective?
In a word: yup.
Not only is email marketing effective, it’s also considered the most profitable of all direct marketing channels. One study showed that email marketing generates an average of $42 for each dollar spent.
That’s a staggeringly high ROI of 4200%.
If people try to tell you that email is dead, you now know two things:
- They don’t know what they’re talking about
- They certainly shouldn’t be in charge of your marketing
Numbers don’t lie.
Achieve your sales goals with the help of email marketing by contacting the Aliste Marketing team today.
You can also see our feature on The Sports Hub spilling our favorite killer email subject lines- listen now.
