Email marketing, still an effective tool?

Email marketing has been a tool used for several years within digital strategies. But is it still effective?

A dilemma that has emerged in recent years among those working in digital strategies is whether email marketing is still effective. The answer requires some elaboration.

What is email marketing?

Wikipedia, the well-known free encyclopedia, states: Email marketing is a type of direct marketing that uses electronic mail as a means of communicating messages, commercial or otherwise, to the public.

Stated this way, it all seems quite simple, and in part it is, but it should be added that email marketing has always been part of digital marketing strategies. Why?

Because choosing a professional email marketing tool often leads to significant results. Let’s start with the medium: electronic mail. There is no doubt that the critical mass of electronic mail usage was reached several years ago, and email marketing is a tool that has always been used strategically by businesses. However, digital marketing strategies have changed over time, often too focused on the mere social aspect. But how effective is an email marketing campaign?

Email marketing campaigns

Even today, campaigns of professional email marketing show interesting results in terms of effectiveness and achievement of objectives. With email marketing, it is possible to acquire customers and increase sales, but it is crucial to have well-built lists at the base that comply with all acquisition rules (opt-in, privacy, etc.).

The peculiarity of email marketing is the funnel, meaning the ability to profile the campaign by choosing the right audience (recipient). Profiling at the beginning of the digital era, about 20 years ago, when it started to emerge among marketing strategists’ tools, was not widely used, and most lists consisted only of an email and at most a first and last name per record. Nothing more.

An DEM (Direct Email Marketing creative sent to a list via email) in the early years of the Internet was sent to the entire list, without any choice of recipient profile. A sort of outbound marketing (an example is phone companies that do telemarketing by spamming indiscriminately) that only considered the size of the list. Especially since years ago, consent from the recipient was not required, and the list manager was paid per send.

Over time, also due to the growth and changes in digital, email marketing has remained a valid tool, but list managers have been asked for more: profiled users, the ability to purchase a portion of the list, recipient consent according to the law, the possibility of purchasing by lead, by CPC, open rates, detailed reports, etc. In short, email marketing has evolved and has remained a valid ally for digital marketers, but it has required more defining elements.

How to run email marketing campaigns

The advice is to do email marketing using niche lists. For example, if you operate in the travel sector, it is essential that the recipients are highly interested. A tour operator, for example, will want to inform travel agencies about their offers, while agencies will send proposals to potential travelers.

Returning to the question: is email marketing still an effective tool? The answer is yes. Provided, however, that it is used professionally and is part of a well-defined digital strategy.

Pubblicato in Digital Marketing