Is email marketing really effective?

The term ‘email marketing’ refers to when an individual or a company promotes its products and services by sending emails to many people (current or potential buyers). Often, the primary objective of this activity is to increase sales, subscriptions, or simply enhance brand awareness. Email marketing works like a charm for businesses that want to collect leads, acquire customers, sell products, and increase their service subscriptions online.

According to a recent study performed by Custora, out of all the activities that brands perform for customer acquisition, email marketing accounts for about seven percent.

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It's been in existence for a long time, yet the debate over its effectiveness for businesses doesn't seem to clear up. Many young business owners and internet marketers often ask this question —is email marketing really effective?

The answer is a big YES. Those who've been exploring the dot-com world for over six to eight years and have seen multiple Google Penguin updates would agree with the statement. Others can take a look at these facts and then decide upon its effectiveness:

You get to interact with a targeted customer base

Unlike social media marketing, through which you get random people liking your brand page, email marketing ensures that you interact with a targeted customer base only. Users decide to share their email ids with you only when they trust the kind of content you publish, services you provide, or products you sell. That's the biggest reason why the conversion rate in email marketing is often higher than other forms of promotional activities.

You don't need to depend on search engines

Most websites depend on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing to get organic traffic and page views, so if search engines ban them for any reason, they can do nothing other than figure out a different business model or wait for Google to remove the penalty. Not to mention, they suffer huge revenue and traffic losses.

If you have a good email list, you don't have to worry about any such thing. Even if search engines ban or demote your website, you can shoot product- or service-related emails to your subscribers. Since they trust you and your services, the probability of them visiting your website and buying your products is very high. So, in a way, with email marketing, you don't have to rely on search engines for traffic, sales, and subscriptions.

Gives you freedom to personalise product promotion campaigns

You can put relevant opt-in forms at different spots on your website and ask people to join your email list for weekly content updates, product and service updates, or a monthly newsletter. Due to a range of choices, more people would love to join your email lists. This practice will also help you personalise your email campaigns and send different promotional emails to your subscribers from time to time.

All in all, email marketing is one of the most innovative and result-oriented forms of online marketing and one you should not ignore at any cost.

Have you tried email marketing for your business? If yes, how was your experience? Please share your feedback in the comments section.