5 Reasons Why Email Marketing Should Be Your Focus This Year

Just when we thought email marketing was falling off the grid a little, it has started making its grand comeback. Within the last year alone, many organisations have swiftly shifted to digitising their strategies and thus put their focus on leveraging and/or optimising their digital channels. As a result, this shift put email marketing tactics back on the marketing map. In fact, according to Hubspot, ’email marketers are sending 27% more emails than they did pre-coronavirus’.

So as you can see, email marketing is obviously having it’s moment, which means rather than scale back it’s actually time to invest more in this marketing channel.


Source: Create and Code

Here’s why email marketing should be your focus this year…

1. It’s what your competitors will be doing

According to Tom Wozniak (Forbes writer), ‘since email volume keeps increasing and Statista data suggests that it will continue rising in the years ahead, it’s safe to say that competition for recipient attention will only become more fierce over the next 12 months.’

For example, if you’re in retail, your competitors have likely doubled down on email marketing since the start of the pandemic. This is attributed to the fact that face-to-face interaction was not exactly easily achievable in this industry due to store closures.

This year it will be important to remind your subscribers about what made them loyal to your brand in the first place. This may call for a shift in strategy to meet their changing priorities and if you want to complete, you’ll have to be willing to make that shift with them.


Source: Pexels

What should you do? Reflect upon and rethink your campaigns, whether that’s simply your welcome email or your nurture flows. This will provide subscribers with a sense of loyalty and trust with your brand.

Now let’s take it one step further. Another reason to focus on your email marketing is because you can use this opportunity to engage with your subscribers and understand what they want and need. Stop blindly putting out information and start turning your email campaigns into a two-way street.

2. You can turn email communications into a two way street

That’s right. You have the opportunity to engage with your subscribers on a whole new level, so take it. Many email marketers view email campaigns as a way of advertising, upselling and putting out information to subscribers, but it’s also a channel that can help you understand your audience better. That is, if you use it properly.

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From promo campaigns, confirmation emails and newsletters to post-purchase drip and re-engagement campaigns, it can be a challenge to meet your customers’ needs if you’re not sending the right message. That’s why a lot of brands in the midst of digitising are now using email campaign feedback. This unique type of user feedback enables your team to deliver powerful email campaigns that sit well with your audience. In turn you will not only be serving up content that your audience craves, but also encouraging them to remain loyal to your brand.

For example, let’s say you want to measure the experience of a customer who has purchased an item from your webstore. In this case you can easily embed an email feedback survey within your confirmation email or any follow-up emails you send to that customer. Alternatively, you can send an email survey. A great feedback metric you can use in Net Promoter Score.


Source: Mopinion

Collecting NPS in a post-purchase email confirmation is a great way to understand how your customers experienced your online journey. Having just completed their purchase or any other online, the experience is still fresh in their minds – meaning it’s the perfect time to ask for feedback and discover how loyal they are to your brand.

3. The need for human connection has increased

And speaking of the message you’re sending, another reason you should be focusing on email marketing is because it enables you to show your brand’s humanity. If you go about email marketing the right way, that is. Humanity doesn’t solely mean reaching out to your subscribers by name. It means putting yourself in their shoes and thinking about what they need, rather than what your brand needs.


Source: Pexels

According to 5W’s 2020 Consumer Culture Report,

83% of consumers are influenced when a brand aligns with a cause they’re passionate about

In other words, your customers are putting their money where their values are and email campaigns provide the perfect opportunity to send them the message that you’re on their side.

Not sure if you’re sending the right message? Then revert back to email feedback as discussed earlier. This will really help you keep in touch with your subscribers on a more ‘human’ level.

4. Personalisation and segmentation provide a competitive advantage

According to Ascend, 50% of marketing influencers have reported that message personalisation is the most effective email marketing strategy. Meanwhile, 37% have found data segmentation for personalisation to be another effective email marketing strategy. In other words, time to put these two powers together!

Part of providing the right message for your subscribers is knowing who your target audience is and what kind of information they require. Regardless of your industry, your subscribers usually have different preferences, ages, languages, interests and behaviours that separate them from the rest. So use these distinctions to target these subscribers with the right content.


Source: Segmentify

Like we said before, personalising a message isn’t just about adding a name to the top of your email, it’s about understanding the needs of your audience members. For example, what does their purchase history tell you? Use this data to showcase other relevant products or services to these same subscribers and keep them in the loop with the latest and greatest. Do this and you’ll be well on your way to ‘trumping’ your competitors.

5. No more manual campaigns, automation is on your side

Traditionally-speaking, email marketing campaigns consist of several emails, all of which are controlled by an email marketer. The marketer decides when and why a specific email is sent out to the subscribers. However, now with automation practices on our side, email marketers are stepping away from this traditional marketing method and letting the machine do the work for them.


Source: Automizy

Let’s look at drip campaigns as an example. Drip campaigns are essentially a set of marketing emails that will be sent out automatically on a schedule. They start out with an action such as a signup, which is followed by a ‘follow up’ email, and then another sent out one week later. These are particularly interesting for email marketers as the user activates the launch of the sequence (depending on their actions), rather than the marketer himself/herself. And bonus! These types of emails tend to be more responsive and friendlier on the receiving end too!

This makes email marketing simple.

Time to bolster your business with rock-solid email campaigns

The ingredients are all there for the taking. Leverage this climb in email marketing popularity and open up opportunities to engage with your customers, humanize your business, and harvest long-lasting relationships.

Email marketing is not going anywhere, nor does it have to be difficult. As long as you’re measuring the impact of your campaigns with tools such as email feedback and following the will of your subscribers, you’ll be off to a great start in 2021.