Email Marketing Is STILL Important. Here’s How To Do It Right in 2021.

Why Email Marketing Is Still Valuable in 2021

It’s 2021. Is email marketing still important? The short answer is yes — but we won’t leave it at that. Email is a more personal and intimate way to foster relationships with your customer base. According to Forbes, it costs more money to gain a new customer than to keep an old one, and email marketing is a great way to utilize your existing customer base. Successful email marketing still requires time, attention, and finesse to be effective and achieve the best results.

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a form of direct digital marketing where advertisers can reach customers with information about new products, special events, great deals, and more. While you may consider this an outdated form of marketing, the developments in tech that make people believe email is obsolete happened recently due to our changing digital world.

Overall, email marketing is very similar to its predecessor, print marketing, which still exists and has real value in modern life. We see flyers, magazine ads, and newspaper ads used today in many different fields. These print marketing tactics attempt to reach customers and include a “call to action,” clearly directing the customer to take a specific action after viewing the ad.

Is Email Marketing Still Important in 2021?

Email is still a relevant way to reach people in 2021. Over four billion people used email this year and experts predict that number will continue to grow. In the United States, over 90% of adults have emails and check them regularly. Despite the rise in social media advertising and other forms of communication like text messages, email marketing still deserves time and investment in your marketing strategy in 2021 and beyond.

What Are the Benefits of Email Marketing?

Here are a few lasting benefits of email marketing to help demonstrate its relevance despite the advance of technology since the early AOL days:

Targeted content: Targeting isn’t limited to social media — you can do it via email too. When building your email list, you should also be documenting your customers’ preferences as you learn more about them so you can send more relevant content. Email marketing also allows you to send content with personalized details like names to make your communication feel more like a relationship and less like an advertisement.
Build rapport: Email marketing is a great way to build rapport with your customer base through continued contact. Customers get dozens of emails a day, so yours need to stand out. For your emails to get noticed, it’s crucial your company sends well-thought-out emails that bring value to the customer. Over time, subscribers will become more invested in your business and want to keep up-to-date on all your sales and events.
Collect feedback: Customer feedback is worth its weight in gold. You can improve and grow your business using this valuable information – what better way to obtain this information than by email? It always helps to provide a small incentive, although many customers will give feedback without incentive on a company they are invested in and have a good relationship with.
Boost sales: Email marketing allows you to take advantage of people’s impulsivity if you formulate your emails correctly. One way to do this is to send emails with similar products to that subscriber’s previous purchases. You also need to create a lot of value in your message — get them invested in the brand values and identity so that they integrate this brand into their lives beyond just a purchase, and they’ll stick around. Pulling the trigger on a purchase as a result of an email isn’t an anomaly – email marketing garners $37 billion in sales every year.
Easily measured: It’s a common misconception that email marketing cannot be measured as easily as other types of marketing. Email marketing is easy to track with valuable metrics such as open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate. All of these metrics go a long way towards developing a solid, effective email marketing program.
Financial investment: Some companies spend a fortune on marketing — especially social media marketing. But sending out emails is cost-effective since sending an email doesn’t cost anything. You have to spend some resources creating a solid email, considering that there may be costs associated with design, copy creation, and possibly even an email marketing software. But this amount is minuscule compared to the amount of money spent on social media advertising campaigns.

Best Practices for Email Marketing in the 21st Century

Email marketing can be effective, but it’s a lot easier to do email marketing wrong than to do it right. Thankfully, we’re here to help with email marketing best practices for the 21st century.

Get consent: There’s nothing worse than unsolicited marketing emails. Ensure you’re not sending unsolicited emails by requiring subscribers to opt into your marketing emails. How do you get prospects to opt-in? Perhaps the best way is to offer incentives in exchange for their consent to receive email, like 10% off their next purchase or early access to your next big sale.
Make unsubscribing easy: Getting consent is vital, but keeping it is also necessary. Always make it easy and straightforward for people to unsubscribe to your emails if they no longer wish to receive them. To figure out why the person is unsubscribing, it’s a good idea to include a short survey alongside the unsubscribe request. This allows you to gain valuable insights that can benefit your email marketing strategy.
Find the right frequency: Perhaps the hardest part about email marketing is figuring out the ideal frequency for your messages. You don’t want to send too often and end up annoying your subscribers. You also don’t want to send too infrequently and become distanced from your customers — email marketing is about building rapport and relationships. Try to find the right frequency for your brand based on past performance and analytic metrics.
Always provide value: If your messages have no value, they won’t get opened. Be upfront with the value and purpose of your message right in the subject line. Before sending out messages, always ask yourself if you would like to receive this message. What can you gain from it? Putting yourself in your customers’ shoes is always a smart business practice, especially when it comes to email marketing.
Embrace customization: Customize your emails with a unique sender name and embedded customer name to make them feel more personal. Gone are the days of sending emails from “no-reply” addresses – create a memorable sender name directly related to your brand, like an “employee name” alongside your brand name. Another way to personalize your message is to include the customer’s name in the copy to build authentic, first-name-basis relationships with your subscribers.

How to Effectively Combine Email Marketing With Other Approaches

Email marketing is essential, but it’s never a good idea to focus your marketing on one single avenue. So how can you diversify your marketing strategy to include emails alongside other approaches? Email marketing fits seamlessly into other types of marketing, especially when it comes to social media.

When combining email marketing with other approaches, it’s essential to have a plan. Deciding what channels you’re going to use? Go with popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok. There’s also SMS marketing to consider. Choosing your channels beforehand can help you create a cohesive and complementary strategy that makes sense for your business.

Consider your audience. Many forms of marketing allow you to target specific groups of people based on set qualifications, so you need to know your target audience before you begin. It helps to create a detailed customer persona with in-depth information about your ideal customer.

Think about your goals. There’s more to marketing than driving sales. Are you looking to increase brand awareness? Do you need more customer information or feedback? Your marketing approach will differ depending on your overall goals and objectives.

What Can an Email Marketing Agency Do?

This is just the tip of the iceberg of email marketing. If you’re feeling lost and overwhelmed by all of this information, the right email marketing agency can help.

An email marketing agency can guide you through implementing email marketing from start to finish. But what does that look like in practice?

If you’re partnering with us, we’ll first conduct an audit of your current email structure. Then, we will optimize your email list by organizing your subscribers into different segments that will allow you to send more targeted and personalized information. After laying the groundwork, we move on to the fun part: copywriting and designing your actual messages. We provide automated content like welcome emails, abandoned cart emails, and post-purchase emails in addition to specific campaigns.

Our work doesn’t stop once we hit send — we keep working to ensure your campaigns are experiencing massive success and actively meeting your objectives. Take Hollywood Hair Bar. We got this client a 1,708% increase in total sales, a 2,956% increase in online store sessions, and a 2,080% increase in total orders — all within 60 days.

If this sounds far-fetched or maybe even impossible, we have the experience, stats, and testimonials to prove it.

Wrap Up

It’s understandable that people dismiss email marketing in favor of 21st-century alternatives. But email marketing has held strong for decades and will continue to do so. Email is an easy and affordable strategy you can use to grow your brand if done correctly. Using an email marketing agency is the best step you can take to start benefiting from this not-so-new approach.