Advantages and Disadvantages of Email Marketing

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So the question is whether to email or not to email. And, considering the overwhelming volume of emails that arrive in each of us inboxes on a daily basis, it’s a very reasonable question. Email is one of the most powerful eCommerce marketing tools available to eCommerce businesses—but only when email marketing plans are created and handled successfully.

Understanding the “good and bad” of email marketing can help you in the development of a successful plan. In this article, I will share with you everything you need to know about the advantages and disadvantages of email marketing.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is the practice of promoting a brand via email. It is an important part of a comprehensive growth marketing plan that includes a variety of marketing channels to help you contact your clients wherever they are and follow their behavioral cues to produce targeted messages that will interest them.

Nothing has replaced email marketing as the most potent channel for connecting brands with their audiences for more than 20 years. It can be challenging for modern marketers to decide how much emphasis to place on the email channel at the expense of other digital marketing channels, or how to use email into a bigger marketing mix.

In reality, email marketing can yield all of its power only if marketers understand how to effectively grow an email list, segment their email list, build campaigns, and track and optimize results.

Let’s take a deep dive into what modern marketers should know about email marketing’s advantages and disadvantages, since this will help him/her know when to use and when not to use email marketing to promote their businesses.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of email marketing?

The Advantages of Email Marketing

1. Email marketing is an affordable way to keep your target audience engaged

Email marketing is a low-cost approach for your company to reach out to and engage customers. If you have the ability to produce your own emails and develop an internal email strategy, the cost of managing an email campaign can be very low. Even if you only invest in a basic email marketing software, you can manage thousands of productive emails monthly.

2. Email marketing can help you build customer relationships

Email is an excellent approach to communicate with customers in a personal and personalized manner. When you create an email that accurately reflects your company’s brand, it will help customers get to know you better, build trust, and improve sales.

3. Email marketing helps you create and boost brand recognition

Your company’s brand consists of much more than just its logo. Your brand is how people recognize you in the marketplace. The tone, design, and substance of your emails will all contribute to the development of your own brand.

4. Email marketing takes less time to launch than other types of marketing

In contrast to more traditional marketing campaigns, which require time for design, production, and distribution, an email can be composed and sent in a matter of minutes.

5. Email marketing is highly customizable

Email can be customized with a few simple keystrokes to create a more personalized customer experience. When you take the effort to understand your target audience, email can be a really effective engagement medium.

6. Data and analytics are easy to acquire and analyze

Data is becoming increasingly valuable in the eCommerce business, as it helps you understand your customers. Email allows you to record and track a variety of information, allowing you to know who opens, reads, and acts on each email.

7. Email marketing can drive website traffic

An email campaign with interesting content and a clear call-to-action (CTA) can help you attract customers to your website.

8. Email marketing is easy to share

Customers can effortlessly email your information to a friend by pressing the ‘forward’ key on their keyboard. Make certain that your email content is valuable and diverse enough to appeal to a wide range of people.

9. Email marketing can reach a wide audience

Three out of four people are using email. Approximately 76 percent of Americans (248.7 million) use email, and many check their email many times a day (usually on their cell phones).

10. Email marketing saves you time

Most email marketing tools allow you to automate all of your marketing emails. This means you won’t have to keep your eyes on your email campaigns everyday, but can just set them up and let them run on their own, then reap the benefits they will bring about.

The Disadvantages of Email Marketing

1. Most people won’t open your email

Because of the huge volume of emails that most people get, it is quite likely that your emails will be lost in the crowd. Personalizing and engaging emails will help you stand out in an overly crowded inbox.

2. Email marketing requires consistency

Emails and email campaigns must be adequately maintained and refreshed on a regular basis. Customers will desire more if they see new content and information.

3. You will have to fight against fear competition for customer attention

Since email marketing is a powerful tool to engage customers, you are not the only one who uses it to reach your customers. There are thousands of businesses out there who are using email marketing to reach their customers too, and if you happen to share the same customer base with a thousand other businesses, you will have to fight a fierce competition to get your emails to stand out.

4. Emails can feel impersonal and ‘sales-y’

Emails, though personalizable, do not replace the value of human interaction. Remember to keep your attention on real people, even when communicating virtually.

5. The unsubscribe button is easy to find

As simple as email is, it is equally simple for your leads and customers to unsubscribe. Customers who are fed up with the volume or content of emails can easily unsubscribe and disappear.

How you can win in the email marketing game

Despite the fact that today’s consumers have a plethora of ways to communicate, email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to interact with your customers.

Email marketers must, however, adapt and move beyond generic batch-and-blast email campaigns. To succeed in email marketing today and break through the clutter in your users’ inboxes, you must create efficient email campaigns that are targeted to your customers’ needs and are part of a larger holistic marketing plan.

Today’s growth marketers combine email marketing with direct mail marketing, social media marketing, web and mobile push notifications, SMS, and in-app notifications to create comprehensive marketing campaigns that reach customers at several touch points throughout their buyer’s journey. Such campaigns can also keep track of how the user interacts with material at each level in order to make customised offers that engage the user more deeply.

Collect as much user data as you can as you grow your contact list, based on form data, survey replies, and real-time behavioral indications, as you track their involvement with your business over time. This information may be used to add additional levels of segmentation to your list, ensuring that each user receives highly relevant, focused content to assist lead them through their buying journey.

You can use behavioral-based triggers to set up a specific messaging sequence to engage with a user at key points in time (for as after a shopping cart abandonment) across email and other relevant channels. While doing so, employ A/B testing to monitor and track campaign effectiveness, making tiny modifications to enhance performance at each touchpoint. A great email marketing campaign is built on a desire to experiment and think outside the box.

Email marketing is still a powerful medium for implementing a successful digital marketing plan. Pay heed to best practices, but don’t be afraid to experiment and iterate on your own to find a winning cadence for engaging and converting your target audience.

Use AVADA Email Marketing Automation to get started with email marketing

AVADA Email Marketing Automation is a multi-channel email and SMS marketing platform that can help you facilitate email marketing campaigns. Main features include:

• Lead capture
• List segmentation
• Abandoned cart saver
• Drag-and-drop email builder
• Email Automated workflows
• Advanced data tracking.

This tool is very suitable for startups and small businesses due to its user-friendliness and affordability. Paid plans start at $9/month for 1,000 subscribers, unlimited emails and full features. There’s a free forever plan for 15,000 emails and 1,000 subscribers that you can use to try out the app. Sign up now!

Final words

That’s it! I hope that this article has provided you with valuable information about the pros and cons of email marketing. Please feel free to leave comments below for further discussion on this topic!