Emailing may seem a bit old concept in today’s world of the internet, technology, digital, and social media. But emailing still plays a significant role in the growth of your business; that’s why businesses and companies still use emailing strategies as a part of their marketing campaign. Today, we’ll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of email marketing.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a way of sending commercial and promotional emails to the list of clients of the company. Businesses and companies send various types of emails to their customers like advertisements, business requests, sales requests, and donations.
The focus of the email marketing strategy is to reach three main goals developing brand loyalty, trust, and brand awareness. The goal of the email is to motivate the customers to make the purchase repetitively, attract new customers, persuade the customer to buy your product immediately, sharing 3rd party ads, and amplify the company’s relationship with the customers.
Advantages of Email Marketing
Some of the main advantages of email marketing are as follows;
Large Audience
Roundabout every three out of four people check out their emails regularly; it makes email one of the biggest digital customer markets. Developing an effective email strategy would help you to stay in the minds of customers, and it amplifies the open and conversion rate.
Easy to Share
Sharing is a form of word-of-mouth marketing, and it runs a free promotional campaign and offers you a free impression, and boosts your sales. Businesses and companies employ various tools to improve the sharing options for customers. However, when customers share your emails, it would help you to expand your customer market.
Promoting Products & Services
If you have got an online store and emails lists of customers; then emailing would allow you to promote your latest products and services in the most efficient way. When you promote your new products and services through emails, then it improves your conversion and sales rate.
Your Own Media Channel
The emails list of your customers is a form of your own media platform that you can use to send emails to your target customers. You don’t have to pay anyone for the promotion and advertisement of products and services via emails. However, it increases your return, sales, and profitability.
Measuring KPIs and Metrics
The emailing tools offer you analytics like KPIs (key performance indicators), metrics, and tracking capabilities. The tracking feature would help you to know whether the customers are opening the emails and buying the product or not. Some of the other things that you can check our our unsubscribe rate, conversion rate, open rate, and bounce rate.
Establishing Trust & Relationship
The emails subscribers of the company would receive hundreds of emails in the consumer cycle or customers lifecycle. Somehow, they build trust and relationships with the company through familiarity. When customers are aware of your products, then it is highly likely that they would become your actual paying customers.
Attracting Visitors to Your Site
Emailing allows you to bring traffic to your website. When you send emails; make sure to double-check the link to your website and show the relevant content to your customers. However, when customers visit your website frequently, then they would become your customers.
Lead Generation
Emailing helps companies to generate a lead for you. Usually, companies send emails to thousands of people on their email list. If companies put CTAs effectively with higher quality content in the emails, then it would amplify the leads.
Web Traffic
If a company has a wide range of customers and attaching the company’s link to the emails would help the company to increase traffic to the website. If you have placed the link effectively, then it would increase the click rate and overall traffic on the website.
Personalization
Personalization is the new way of digital marketing completely different from traditional marketing. The personalization would help you to send direct and customized emails directly to the customers. It amplifies the conversion and open rate because customers feel that you’re directly talking to them.
Automation
Automated tools have made performing small repetitive tasks much easier. You can use many free and paid automation tools for sending marketing messages to your entire emails list and integrate it with the latest offers.
Sales Channel
There are various media channels that would help you to increase sales, and emailing is among one them. That’s why many small businesses employ a low-cost emailing approach to increase their leads and sales, and it has helped them so far very well.
Customer Feedback
Companies can send surveys and friendly questionnaires to the customers, and get feedback from target customers. The feedback and reviews of customers would help companies to improve the quality of their products.
Low Cost
If compare the cost of emailing with PPC, TV ads, or other forms of traditional ads, then it is very low. Even by adding up the cost of emailing with automated tools, it would still be a highly cost-effective marketing strategy.
Higher ROI
Emailing is a highly cost-efficient strategy with a higher ROI (return on investment). It allows you to attract the attention of new customers and increases the conversion rate of existing customers.
Disadvantages of Email Marketing
Some of the main disadvantages of email marketing are as follows;
Copywriting Skill
In order to make subscribers click the promotional link and buy the product or service, your copywriting skill should be highly efficient. If not, then you have to hire a good copywriter and they charge a lot of money.
Device Issues
Sometimes, your developers produce a very good email design, but it only opens on the desktop. You have to make sure that it should be mobile friendly, and could open on laptops, tablets, androids, and Apple devices. An incompatible design would decrease the conversion and click rate.
Email Regulations
You have to be aware of emails regulations of different countries because sending promotional emails is banned and fined in some locations. Therefore, you should send promotional emails in such countries where you have got permission.
Low Conversion Rae
The impression is acceptable to some extent, but the click to the conversion rate of customers via emails is very low. There is no guaranteed result from the emailing; it may or may not deliver you the required results. According to an estimate, the conversion rate is 1 to 2%, and you have to send emails to a lot of customers. (advantages and disadvantages of email marketing)
Easy Unsubscription
If customers find your content irritant and repulsive, then they would unsubscribe from receiving your emails without any hesitation. Your email list would start declining. That’s why you have to be highly cautious about your promotional content and follow the personalization approach.
Fierce Competition
The promotional emails market has become highly competitive, and almost all the companies follow the emailing strategy. In such a competitive emails market environment, it is highly difficult for companies to make customers open their emails.
Not Opened Emails
The rate of unopened emails is very high; it would decrease the click rate, impression, and conversion. Ultimately, your whole emailing strategy would collapse to nothing.
Undelivered Emails
If your customers’ emails list has got flaws, then it would increase the undelivered emails rate. The undelivered emails would decrease the conversion rate, and ROI; waste your time, and cost you a lot of money.
Spamming
If customers find your emails a nuisance, then they would mark your email as spam, and your message won’t reach your target customer’s market. You have to make sure that the customers aren’t spamming your domain along with the email list.
Conclusion: Advantages and Disadvantages of Email Marketing
After an in-depth study of the advantages and disadvantages of email marketing; we have realized that email is highly significant for your business if done effectively. If you’re developing emailing strategy for your business, then you should keep in mind the abovementioned tips and guidelines.
Ahsan Ali Shaw is an accomplished Business Writer, Analyst, and Public Speaker. Other than that, he’s a fun loving person.