What is email marketing?

Email is not a novel technology. It was, in fact, one of the very first forms of digital communication that emerged in 1971. However, even after 50 years, email marketing is more popular than ever.

Despite those who may still be wondering whether social media is the new hot thing and email is becoming a thing of the past, the reality is different.

While social media is a critical component of any digital marketing plan, email marketing gives you direct access to your subscribers’ inboxes, and is significantly more cost-effective than other channels, particularly when considering the reach and conversion rate. And this is one of the reasons why email marketing is perfect for small businesses.

Email is a popular marketing tool for businesses in part because it requires users to take action; an email will remain in the inbox until it is read, deleted, or archived.

Email marketing may help you consolidate relationships with your audience, and drive traffic to your website, blog, social media pages, or anywhere you want them to go. You can also leverage segmentation and target users based on demographics and behavior, to ensure that you only send your subscribers the messages they want to see.

While email marketing appears to be the ideal approach to reach out to clients, generate new leads, and strengthen key business ties, there are some limitations, such as:

Spam

Our inboxes appear to be overloaded with useless content - "Lose 50 pounds in a month", "Get the best discounts here", "Hello, I am a wealthy Nigerian Prince" - We all receive these kinds of emails on a daily basis and almost immediately delete them. And many of these messages usually go unnoticed since they end up in our junk or spam folders anyway. Therefore, from a business perspective, unless you intentionally bypass spam filters, some of your emails will frequently be just a waste of time, as they won’t get to be read by anyone.

Size

If your email is too large, it may take a long time to load — or might not load at all. In the time it takes to download, your prospect may have already lost interest, thus costing you business.

Competition

Aside from its minor disadvantages, email marketing still remains a popular type of marketing, which means your campaigns will not be the only ones flooding customers' inboxes. This implies that in order to differentiate yourself from competitors, you may need to invest in good copywriters or offer additional discounts to pique your subscribers’' interest.

Engagement

A customer will frequently see an ad and subscribe to emails based on that one offer. They might or might not use it, but in any case, they will be added to your email subscribers list. Still, this doesn't mean they will continue to read your emails and visit your website. You must always discover new ways to engage your audience, otherwise, you risk seeing a drop in your open rate or a large number of individuals unsubscribing.

Design

Email may now be accessed from a variety of devices, including phones, tablets, and laptops. This implies that, unless you build a different version of your emails for each platform, your clients may receive poorly rendered campaigns that will affect their experience.

Email marketers can't know for sure what operating system each of their recipients is running. And with poorly optimized emails, what was previously an aesthetically pleasing campaign might now contain strange gaps, missing images, and logos, they are difficult to read and provide little information. These irritate your subscribers who will quickly delete your campaign, especially if they misidentify it as spam or a hoax. So always test your emails on as many devices and browsers (https://themarketer.com/resources/glossary/browser-compatibility) as possible.

Cost

While many email services claim to be free, numerous of them nonetheless charge fees for certain features, such as removing their branding, creating audience segments, adding product blocks, sending more than a specific number of campaigns, etc.

Make sure you understand the criteria for free emails and that you are fully aware of any additional costs that may apply. When you hire someone to create an email template for you, assist you in the creation of a database of suitable contacts, and distribute the emails, you may see your budget depleting faster than expected.