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Is Email Marketing Dead? The Down & Dirty Guide to Emails That Convert

What type of digital marketing gives you a 4,200% ROI? No, this isn’t a trick question. It’s not building and selling a course. It’s not posting to Instagram multiple times a day. And no, it’s not hosting a live webinar every month to gain followers. It’s email marketing. So is email marketing dead? Short answer, NO!

Email marketing is older than AOL and gives you access to 92% of internet users around the globe. And 91% of these people interact with email marketing every single day. In all, email marketing opens the door to a potential audience of 4.5 BILLION people by 2024.

Why Email Marketing Is Important?

Print ads are expensive and land straight in the recycle bin. But 99% of US consumers over the age of 15 check their email at least once a day. More than half of email users check our email before we do anything else online.

(Yes, raising my hand as guilty. What else is there to do when you don’t want to get out of bed? For me it’s email, then a quick scroll through Twitter to see if the world has blown up while I slept.)

Is Email More Effective than Social Media?

Social media is free too, right? Yes, spot on there. But with all the algorithm jostling, odds are you won’t show up to all of your own followers, let alone the rest of the 223 million social media users in the U.S. Potential? Oh yes. Reality? Solid no. 

Engagement rates on these marketing channels are lower than .6%. And the shelf life for a post is about 4 hours. Open rates with email average almost 23%. And once people open your emails, 3.71% of those people will click something in your email.

Those are some strong conversion rates! Plus, they can save an email to come back to. Not so much with social media. In sum? Email marketing is 40 times more effective than social media.

What are the Top Values of Email Marketing?

What if social media platforms go down? Not just an “out of service” down, but a “closed our doors to business” down. You’re out all your followers. All your contacts. Gone. POOF.

With email marketing, you own your list. It lives with you, not in the tunnels of Meta. That alone is a HUGE value. No one can take that list from you. It’s the goldmine of your business. Because it can build loyalty and from there, profits.

With most email marketing services like Mailchimp, MailerLite, and ConvertKit, you can track ALL THE DATA. You know how many open your email, how many clicks, and what they click. You can test different messages with different audiences.

All these metrics help you hone your email campaign to be as effective as possible. Study it, make changes, and test it again. Soon you’ll know exactly what works with your particular audience and your unique brand.

Is email marketing dead? NO! because you can track all the metrics

How Do I Use Email Effectively?

With such a great tool at our fingertips and often FREE, how do you use it effectively? Lots and lots of ways, friend. Here’s how to best address your target audience:

  • You can use email marketing to welcome a new customer and guide them through all you do. A 3-5 email series is a great way to acclimate them to your brand and help them fall a bit more in love with you.
  • You can use it to sell things to your email subscribers by announcing a sale or a new product. 
  • You can build customer loyalty. Who doesn’t want to be the first to know, get access to special content, or receive discounts based on past purchases? Email can be a great way to give your customers a high five for being so awesome.
  • You can use email to educate your audience. Meet them in their pain points and show a way through. Help them learn from your mistakes. Teach them something useful in relation to what you do. Or point them toward a great tool or resource. All this helps establish you as the authority on what you do. You become the go-to for all things in your niche.

How Often Do I Send Emails?

Most marketers recommend sending emails to your list once a week. For small businesses, create an email twice a month to address your email lists as long as you’re consistent and provide valuable stuff in each email. This allows you to stay top of mind.

Experiment with your content. You don’t have to write a novel every email. (Or any time, no thank you!) Maybe one email a month can be all about what you’re up to and what you’re providing and the second could be a customer story. Maybe in each one you share a blog article and a resource.

Come up with a strategy, track your metrics, and adjust based on what you discover.

Top Email Marketing Strategies for Small Business Owners

Personalize

Address your customer by name and make them feel you’re talking just to them, not one of the hundreds of people you’re sending to. Bonus points if you segment your audience and further personalize your emails based on each customer’s interests. 

Make it pretty

You don’t need a professional designer to make your emails attractive. Make your message clear, your design clean, and leave lots of space for your content to live in. No one wants to read a big, heavy block of text!

Stage your content from most relevant to least so your reader will still get the most important content even if she doesn’t make it to the bottom of your email.

Segment your list

Use tags to help organize the people on your list by their interests. This allows you to sent them targeting emails about the very things they’re most interested in!

Hone your subject lines

Spend time on this! If you don’t make your subject line enticing, the rest doesn’t matter. A/B test it, using two different subject lines.

Create a clear call to action

What do you want your email subscribers to do with your email? Make sure you make it clear and easy.

Test and test some more

Send your email newsletters to yourself before blasting it out so you can experience what it will look like in your inbox. Make sure you’re able to read it easily on a phone or tablet, too, without scrolling left to right on every line.

If you’re just starting out, have a friend read it over for you as well, first to proof it and then to give you any constructive feedback.

Automate

Email marketing services allow you to schedule your emails in advance. This means you can sit down once a month and write all your monthly emails, schedule them, and not think about them again.

You can also use an email automation as a welcome series to new subscribers. Write it once and you’re suddenly building fans, loyalty, and sales without lifting your finger. 

So when someone asks you, “Is email marketing dead?” you can clearly answer NO! It’s becoming a more and more effective content marketing tool to build your customer base. AND it’s cost effective!

Make the intentional choice to start sending more emails and watch your business thrive. And if your to-do list is crazy-long like mine seems to be, make this marketing strategy the one thing to knock out before the end of the week. Your marketing efforts will definitely pay off! Is