Is email marketing still relevant in 2020?

As a company or marketer, you might be asking yourself about the most effective forms of marketing out there. Especially with the 4th industrial revolution on everybody’s lips, avenues such as machine learning, automation and many other mediums to engage with clients are now beginning to be used across the globe.

With the recent worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, and the associated lockdowns being enforced in numerous countries, workforces globally have had to adapt and change how they conduct business. Consumers around the world are also interacting with products, services and brands differently and employees are embracing a new way of working and being productive. 

So, where does email fit into this new marketing mix? Is it still relevant to use as a returns-bearing form of marketing for your business? The truthful answer is that we don’t know either! 

What we do know is that it’s a tried and tested medium and that at the beginning of 2020, more emails were sent every minute across the globe than any other digital message. What we do know, is that we trust numbers and we trust facts. Here are some factoids and truths that may shed some light on the relevance of email marketing.
 

It’s the best ROI of any digital medium in SA

Email marketing has the best return on investment (ROI) of any digital marketing channel measured in 2019 research. On average, clients have reported an average ROI of 30:1 when using targeted and segmented email marketing.

Meaning for every R1 spent on email marketing; you can expect around R30 worth of return. Our friends at Campaign Monitor in the UK have said that for every pound spent on email marketing, there is an ROI of 38 pounds generated and over the pond in the US, it’s around $44. Check out the research here.

 

It’s low cost

Email marketing is extremely cost-effective, in contrast to a host of other digital communication platforms. On average, it costs 80% to 86% less to send an email than to promote content on social media or via search engines.

 

It’s easy to measure

It’s effortless to measure the success of an email campaign. You can get immediate feedback on the delivery success rate, open rate, bounce rate, click rate, conversion rate and more. This easy to measure aspect also makes it ideal for A/B testing a marketing campaign. You also have the added benefit of tagging emails to see where your audience goes after they leave the email environment.

 

You can do some really cool sh!t!

Email marketing is not just a “newsletter”. We say screw the newsletter approach and give clients valuable content, tailored to them when they want to hear from you.

How you may ask? Well, with email you’re able to achieve some great engagement, using tools that most companies aren’t yet utilising. You have the ability to hyper-segment and target your database and tailor things like imagery, personalised content and various other email elements to an exact individual. The beauty is that it’s relatively simple to do while being highly personalised and effective. 

 

The numbers talk

When it comes to communicating directly with clients, here are some of the stats we discovered:

Still not convinced?

Consider these stats about email marketing and which tactics work the best:

There you have it, folks. Email is still super relevant! If you want to find out more, click here to see how our team at TouchBasePro help companies improve their returns through effective email marketing. We’d love to hear your thoughts!