Email Marketing Pros and Cons

What is email marketing and why email marketing?

Email marketing has remained a marketing channel of choice for businesses seeking to reach a wide audience using cost efficient and effective channels. It is a form of direct marketing that can be used by businesses to promote their products and services, engage customers and form long term customer relationships.

There are several digital marketing channels, and email marketing is considered one of the most efficient and effective methods. It is used by several leading ecommerce businesses including the e-commerce giant Amazon because of its effectiveness. Most businesses use it in conjunction with other types of digital marketing like PPC advertising, social media advertising and content marketing.

Businesses rely on email marketing because it is cost effective and can drive higher conversion rates. For example, emails can be very effective at encouraging customers to take action like make a purchase or check out a new offer.

Email marketing also offers higher control in terms of content and message and can be used to connect with customers in real time. Moreover, email marketing allows for a higher degree of personalization which is very critical for effectiveness. So, email marketing also allows for more effective targeting of your audience.

There are several such services including paid and free that allow you to design excellent promotional and other types of emails. Such specialized email services can be very useful for targeting customers.

Types of email marketing:

The most common types of email marketing based on their purpose are as follows:

• Welcome emails: These emails are generally sent to new users who have just registered on your website. For example, businesses send welcome emails to customers who have just subscribed to their services.

• Newsletters: This is the most common form of email marketing used by online businesses. Customers can opt in for newsletters to stay abreast with all the latest events and offers. Businesses send daily, weekly or monthly newsletters that provide the latest news regarding the business.

• Seasonal emails: Seasonal emails are sent to inform customers about the seasonal offers and most commonly they are sent during the holiday season and on special days like Christmas, New year or Valentine’s day. Seasonal emails are also sent to inform customers about special seasonal offers like a summer season bonanza.

• Special offers: Special offer emails are sent to customers to inform them about special offers and price discounts. Sometimes these offers may be personalized for individual users.

• Abandoned cart: Sometimes customers leave items in their shopping cart and leave. However, ecommerce businesses can remind their customers of such abandoned items in their carts through abandoned cart emails. This is mostly an automated process that all the leading ecommerce businesses including Amazon use to secure purchases.

• Re-engagement: Re-engagement emails are sent to customers that have not visited the platform for quite some time. Ecommerce businesses try to entice such customers back with the help of special offers. Suppose a customer has canceled his annual subscription, then the business can send him a re-engagement email with an offer that gives him the first one month of subscription free.

• Event invitations: Some businesses use this to boost attendance at their events. Customers are sent event invitations via email which contains a link to a registration page where they can book their seats.

Now, you can see that there are several types of email marketing and that email marketing can be used in several scenarios to boost sales and customer loyalty.

Pros and Cons of email marketing:

Email marketing offers several advantages and it is why email marketing has become common across the world as the number of email users continues to grow. Currently, there are around 4.5 billion email users worldwide and the highest number of mails are sent in the United States.

Since its advent during the 1970s, email has continued to maintain its fame as one of the most effective marketing channels. In 2024, total email marketing revenue is projected to cross $9.5 billion according to Statista. There are very few other channels that can match email marketing’s high ROI. If done consistently, email marketing has a lot of potential in terms of catching consumer attention.

Pros of Email marketing:

Affordability:

Email marketing is among the most cost effective marketing channels.Most advanced ecommerce platforms have developed their own email marketing platforms to send emails to customers. Businesses also use paid email marketing services to consistently promote their business and products through email marketing. Email has always remained a cost effective method of reaching thousands or even millions of customers.

For a brand that has to reach only a few hundred or a few thousand customers, email marketing can be very cost effective. Apart from designing a good looking email message that can engage customers, there is hardly any investment in sending emails in bulk to customers.

However, businesses can also use emails to reach a very large customer base without having to invest a fortune. Its cost effectiveness is among the most crucial factors that email marketing has maintained its popularity as the preferred marketing channel for millions of marketers.

Flexibility:

Email marketing is highly flexible in terms of content and design. It means you can use media files, and text according to your choice or even send pdf and other types of attachments with marketing emails. Most businesses use their own theme in marketing emails that reflects their branding. Businesses include their logo inside the emails which apart from growing the visual appeal of the email also helps build credibility.

Customizability:

You can customize email messages easily according to your needs. This is why email marketing also allows for a higher degree of personalization. One does not need to have high level technical skills to make use of email marketing or to customize messages and content according to his need. Moreover, the email messages can be customized to make them highly engaging.

Scalability:

Email marketing is affordable as well as a scalable marketing channel. It means that whether you need to reach a few customers or a few thousand, you do not need to worry about scalability. Email can be used to send messages in bulk and reach thousands of customers with a single stroke.

Higher personalization:

Email marketing also allows for a higher level of personalization. For example, when integrated with the customer relationship management system, email marketing can help deliver more personalized messages to customers.

One can segment customers based on their past activities and send messages regarding things they are interested in. It can help drive higher customer engagement and build more meaningful and lasting customer relationships.

You can also integrate marketing automation into your email marketing to collect and analyze user data as well as send the right emails at the right time to maximize campaign effectiveness.

Higher conversions:

Email marketing can be an effective marketing channel throughout the customer journey and can help drive conversions higher. For example, marketers include call to action in their promotional emails and people can click on them to make a purchase.

Apart from influencing people to choose a product and buy it, email marketing is also used by marketers to form longer term relationships and drive higher post purchase engagement. Marketers also experience higher conversions when they do email marketing consistently. The return on investment in the case of email marketing is also generally higher compared to several other marketing channels.

A large number of marketers experienced increased return on investment on their email marketing campaigns. For example, 52 percent marketers reported a double improvement in their email marketing ROI according to a poll carried out by Statista.

Measurable:

Once can easily measure the results of his email marketing campaign. Marketers utilize diverse metrics to measure the success of their email marketing campaigns. For example, conversion rate is the most preferred metric of marketers engaging in email marketing.

Open rate and click through rates are also important metrics used by marketers to measure the success of their email marketing campaigns. Based on these metrics, one can make changes to his email marketing campaigns and optimize them for higher success in the future.

Non-intrusive:-

Compared to some other marketing channels, email marketing can be less intrusive for customers. Suppose you contact a customer over the phone and if it is not a suitable time, the customer may feel annoyed. However, this is not the case with email marketing since a customer can read an email whenever he has the time to. Businesses also allow customers the option to choose if they want to continue receiving promotional messages or would like to unsubscribe from certain mail categories.

Time Saving:

Email marketing is also much less time consuming compared to several other marketing channels. Businesses are now using marketing automation and AI based email marketing tools to help them with email marketing. AI is going to play an integral role in email marketing particularly in terms of image generation and automatic content. Around 95% of marketers who create marketing emails with the help of AI rate it as effective and 54% rate it as very effective.

Using automation tools and AI, marketers can send emails to their customers regularly. For example, a welcome email can be automatically sent when a user signs up or an offer email in the case of an abandoned cart. Marketers can develop different templates for use in each of the various scenarios and these templates can also be used repeatedly.

Real time promotions and customer engagement:-

Email marketing can be used to engage with customers in real time. You can always reach the customers in real time with the right offer using email marketing. You can also use automation tools to send emails whenever a user performs a certain action on the website such as a welcome email or an abandoned cart email. While it helps engage customers in real time, it also helps drive higher conversion rates.

Cons of email marketing:

There are several advantages of email marketing. However, there is also a need to be consistent in order to achieve all the desired objectives from email marketing. Email marketing also has certain shortcomings which need to be overcome to run effective marketing campaigns.

Spam:

Targeted messaging is important when it comes to email marketing. If your emails are not personalized and targeted at the right people, they may end up in the spam folder or customers may unsubscribe from them. Send emails to people who have subscribed to receive them and not to random recipients. A large number of spammers are also using email marketing to target innocent customers. Therefore, it is important to use the right template and target the right customers. Untargeted messages experience much lower click through rates compared to targeted messages.

Design related issues:

Design and functionality are also important when you are running an email marketing campaign. It is because if emails are not designed well to show properly across various devices, they may have a low open and click through rate. You will need to strike a proper balance between design and functionality so as to have the highest impact. You will need to focus on the amount of text and graphics to include in the messages so that they acquire and retain customer attention and drive higher engagement.

Technical issues:

You also need to take care of the technical aspects of email marketing. Emails also need to have the right heading and content so that they are not filtered and end up in spam. If you do not update your email marketing list regularly, emails may remain undelivered. Resize images and files before including them with emails since larger files may take too long to load and therefore they may be ignored by the recipients.

Proper resources and skills:

While email marketing may look very simple and easy to use at a first look, consistency is key to successful email marketing campaigns. You will need both the proper resources and skills to do it the right way. Apart from the right templates and design as well as recipients’ list, you will also need the right skills. Otherwise, you can outsource email marketing to an external firm.