7 Reasons Why Email Marketing Is Better Than Other Forms of Marketing

Table of Content:

What Is Email Marketing?

Why is email marketing better than other forms of marketing?

1. Email marketing is more personal.
2. You own your list of email subscribers
3. You don’t have to deal with algorithm updates.
4. You can get a higher ROI.
5. Email is an open platform.
6. Email will not go away anytime soon.
7. Email makes sure your message is delivered.

Final Words

More than 34 percent of people around the world are using email. It’s around 2.5 billion people. It is expected to rise to 2.8 billion email users over the next two years. Email is undeniably popular. The Radicati Group expects the world to send about 196 billion emails a day. Out of these 196 billion sent emails, the bulk of it, 109 billion, is business email.

With that huge number of emails sent on a daily basis, email marketing is a vivid and effective way to get in contact with people. Think about it from your own experience. Do you know someone who does not have an email address? You get a lot of HTML emails every week. You read them, get motivated by them, and even look forward to the next one. Email is a huge part of our lives.

Email marketing is also a unique way to reach your target customers. Messages from your friends and family are right next to your company’s email notifications. That’s why email marketing yields the most power when it’s personalized. An email should be customized to the customer’s preferences so that any contact is important to their interests. You can cover topics such as improvements in your business, achievements, ask your customer for feedback – this list is practically infinite. With 2.5 billion active users, email is not going to go away anytime soon.

Are you still unsure that Email Marketing is a powerful tool for your business? Let me give you seven reasons why Email Marketing is a medium you should not ignore. Let’s look at some key reasons why email marketing is better than other forms of marketing.

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing

Any time a company sends an email, apart from confirmations of orders and direct answers to questions from the customer, it could be considered a form of email marketing. Email marketing can include emails with company updates, or product promotions, and exclusive offers for subscribers. Marketing emails can often be a way to deliver a general message on behalf of the brand in the face of any important event, such as a ceremony, a natural disaster, or even a corporate scandal.

At its finest, email marketing helps companies to keep their customers updated and tailor their marketing messages to their audiences. However, if overused, this kind of marketing will scare consumers away with persistently irritating spam emails.

Why is email marketing better than other forms of marketing?

1. Email marketing is more personal.

Email marketing can be personalized.

Consumers today expect deeper communication from the brands they purchase from. Particularly in this digital age, where everything appears to be done behind the curtain of a pixel screen, people want to build more meaningful relationships – which is where email comes in.

When you upload something on social media, you simply have to wait for followers to scroll far enough down their timeline to see it. And, with all the algorithms updated that offer priority recently to content from friends and family, brands frequently find their posts disappearing into the void.

Email, on the other hand, is sent directly to someone’s inbox. It’s a much more intimate way to connect with your clients because you’re actually talking to them one-on-one with a personalized message.

2. You own your list of email subscribers.

You won’t lose your list of email subscribers.

Imagine spending countless hours building your social network to something you’re proud of just to have your fan page (or worse, the platform) taken down, which takes all your lovely fans with it (Remember what happened to Vine?). The issue with social media sites is that they have ownership over your followers, and essentially you don’t own anything at all. If Twitter shuts its doors tomorrow, how many people will you immediately be out of touch with?

The difference if you use email marketing is that you own your list of followers, whether it’s a CRM or a basic Excel file. When a customer has signed up for your list, you will have access to them as long as they continue to be on your list. You are not at the mercy of the unpredictable and ever-changing dynamics of the social media scene.

3. You don’t have to deal with algorithm updates.

There are no algorithm updates with email marketing.

Social media sites are determined to give users what they want – and that’s awesome. But often, this is to the detriment of companies and enterprises who are trying to get their brand and products in front of the public.

Platforms like Instagram and Facebook have significantly modified their algorithms over the last few years to reflect the wants and desires of their users. Consumers, in other words, tend to see more posts from family and friends than from brands. This meant that marketers have to be innovative in seeking ways to stand out on their customers’ personal feeds if they want to get some traction in their social media ads at all. Email doesn’t have any such algorithms. It’s pretty straight forward: you send an email, and it’s going to go straight to the top of the recipient’s inbox.

4. You can get a higher ROI.

Email marketing has a higher ROI.

Here’s where we can put in the numbers and make it juicy. As a marketer, you’re typically constantly thinking about the ROI of the strategies you’re implementing. It’s not worth wasting time, energy, and money on a strategy that doesn’t yield any results, which is why email is your buddy.

On average, 1 in 5 marketing emails are opened and they have an overall click-through rate of 3.57 percent. Facebook, on the other hand, just has an overall click-through rate of 0.07 percent. But it’s going farther than that. In fact, email marketing brings the highest ROI compared to other marketing strategies, on average any business that spends $1 on email marketing can expect to receive $38 in revenue in return.

Source: Marketing Insider Group

5. Email is an open platform.

Over the last few years, several companies have invested millions of dollars in the purchase of massive media tracks in order to be able to connect and engage with the public. But while companies are investing in multiple social media sites, Facebook has regularly changed its algorithm to reduce the number of followers that will see the post of a brand, unless such posts are paying for advertising.

This has been so common that 98 percent of brand followers will never see the posts in their News Feeds. Twitter seems to be going in a similar direction with the announcement that it will soon launch an algorithm-controlled update. The issue with social networks like Facebook and Twitter is that they are owned and operated by third parties, which ensures that advertisers are at the mercy of changes made to their sites.

In contrast, email is not owned or operated by any single individual. It’s an open communication network, and there is a multitude of sites that provide access to send and receive emails. The vast variety of organizations involved in email marketing means that no one can make adjustments that will have a widespread impact, and unlike Facebook or Twitter, if you spend time and money in creating and developing a great email list, your subscription list would be your own asset. And you’re going to be able to use your list without the fear of anyone restricting its effectiveness.

6. Email will not go away anytime soon.

Email marketing is long-lasting.

Remember MySpace? “What is it?” Are you asking? This once-hot website was the largest social networking site in the world between 2005 and 2008, and in June 2006 it surpassed Google as the most-visited website in the United States. Where is MySpace now? Many of these users gradually migrated to other social networks, and the site now ranks 1500th in the United States. 

Imagine spending a tremendous amount of time and resources to create an audience on a site only to have a ghost town a year or two later. The effect on your ability to attract and retain potential customers will be devastating.

Email, on the other hand, has a long history of reliability and stability. The first promotional email campaign was sent to a total of 400 people in 1978, and email has been increasing steadily since then. Interestingly, the email space itself has developed from a time when you needed a developer to design an email to today, where tools like Campaign Monitor or MailChimp allows modern marketers to quickly create and submit beautiful branded emails. This change has placed the power of business emails in the hands of more people. 

Building your email list, unlike building social media after that, is a secure long-term investment that will pay off for several years to come.

7. Email makes sure your message is delivered.

Email marketing delivers your message.

If marketers have to select between adding a subscriber to their email list or having a new Facebook follower, they should always go to the email subscriber. There are two main reasons why: first, 90% of emails are successfully sent to the intended recipient’s inbox, while only 2% of your Facebook followers see your updates in their News Feed. This is because Facebook restricts the number of times the posts appear in the News Feed in an effort to push advertisers to their paid advertisement choices.

This is a huge deal when it comes to putting your ads in front of the viewers. On Facebook, if you post an update to your 10,000 followers, only about 200 of them will have a chance to see it in their News Feed. Alternatively, if you send an email to 10,000 users, at least 9,000 of them will receive it in their inbox.

This means that your message is 50 times more likely to be viewed via email than Facebook. Second, your email subscribers clearly told you they wanted to hear from you when they signed up for your email list. There are strict SPAM laws and rules, so if you’re emailing a prospect or a client, it’s because they’ve given you permission to do so. Now think about the advertisements in your Facebook News Feed – did you ask the advertisers to show ads to you? It’s definitely not. More than likely, you searched Google or visited their website. That’s certainly different from the constructive signing of an email newsletter. Email marketing has been proven to ensure that your audience receives your message.

Final Words

Email may be an old marketing tactic, but it still remains a vital one in today’s marketing landscape. It’s relatively simple to get started with email marketing, so you certainly should include it in your marketing strategy. I hope this article has successfully explained to you why email marketing is superior to other forms of marketing. Please feel free to leave comments below for further discussions on this topic.

Phuong Nguyen

Phuong Nguyen is a marketing enthusiast with over three years of experience in the world of eCommerce. He is currently working for Avada Commerce - a dedicated eCommerce solution provider. Phuong shares his knowledge and expertise on a frequent basis with his well-researched articles to bring useful information about eCommerce to entrepreneurs and marketers.