Not Even Close to Dying By Abigail Thorpe
When Ray Tomlinson sent the first email in 1971, he set the stage for technological innovation that would change the way we communicate, work and live our day-to-day lives. In 2018, 281 billion emails were sent and received each day, and there were 3.8 billion email users—a number expected to grow to 4.3 billion by 2023, according to Statista.
Naturally, a communication platform that could reach so many at the click of a button was rapidly adopted into the marketing realm, and so began mass email, email subscriber lists, and yes, a rapid jump in spam. But ask marketers several years ago, and many would have said email marketing was dying out, largely due to the growth of social media.
The truth? Email marketing isn’t dead or dying, not even close. It remains the most cost-effective form of marketing, with a massive return on investment, or ROI—around $40 for every dollar spent. The approach to email marketing is changing, but its effectiveness is still obvious. “Email has had such a major transformation,” says Steve Russo, executive director of Rocket Fish Digital. “It was big, then died, and now more than ever people are buying products and services from email.”
Naturally in this day and age, spam and unsolicited emails can, in the worst-case scenario, deter your customer, and in the best case garner a minute of their time or end up in the spam folder. But if you build and maintain an engaged subscriber list, and provide them interesting content fueled by incentives, your emails can be the first step toward visiting your website or physical location, and the time it takes is minimal in comparison to the return.
The trick to building an engaged audience? You have to take the time to build email content that is interesting, visually stunning, appeals to your target audience(s) and provides them some benefit, whether that be a contest or discount, or applicable content they want to read and share.
There are lots of email campaigns out there, so it takes a little work to make yours clickable. Many email users are mobile, so mobile optimization is key. Email marketing may be inexpensive and less time consuming than other marketing opportunities, but it has to be done right to be effective. This is just one of the things Rocket Fish Digital can help with, and since we’re focused on delivering great content to connect local businesses to the community, you can bet we don’t send a dud email.