When I was still new to digital marketing and reading all I could about it, I read that email marketing is dead, and I conversely read that it is an excellent form of e-marketing. Which is true? I read in a third book, it was an essential part of online marketing, so I presented the idea to my former employer. They disagreed that it was the way to go. They didn’t like getting emails, so they assumed no one else did, and I had no data to back it up.
Not Even Close
When I started in my last digital marketing role, there was a record of email marketing campaigns sent by the previous marketer. I was able to see the analytics in Shopify and see the impact of both e-marketing and social media on store sales. Social media wasn’t even close, and the email newsletters had brought in 10 times as many sales as social media!
What About Social Media?
I used to love social media when I signed up for Facebook over a decade ago, but my fondness has dwindled to lukewarm tolerance over the last couple of years. I am confident that many people have grown tired of the outrage and cancel culture.
Email Marketing Omits Gloom
For me, email marketing leaves out the negativity associated with social media. With e-marketing, people will unsubscribe if your message doesn’t resonate with them. You can argue that unsubscribing is the same as being canceled, but that is not a personal attack. People will unsubscribe from your list; that is a fact of e-marketing life, but if they choose to, they aren’t your target customer, and that is fine.
Another issue I have with Social Media is that it is constantly changing. It is time-consuming to keep up with all of the changes to image size requirements. The back-end dashboard to manage your page looks nothing like it did a couple of years ago. One has to have a real passion for social media to keep up with all changes and new platforms. Sure, email marketing changes too, and it changed significantly last year with Apple’s new Mail Protection Privacy (MPP) initiation. But this change felt more like an exciting challenge to me.
Why do I Enjoy Email Marketing so Much?
Digital newsletters combine all of the skills I have acquired over the past decade. There is some creativity to it, both visual design and writing. I enjoy reading the analytics learning what works and what doesn’t. I also found it gratifying to clean up old subscribers that hadn’t opened any emails in 6 months. It felt like I was clearing dead weight. On top of that, the click rate improved!
Final Thoughts
There may be some industries where email marketing is dead. However, it’s alive and well from my perspective. When I look at the emails in my inbox from various businesses, this offers another clue that e-marketing is thriving. Marketing managers wouldn’t pay an email marketing specialist to put out a daily email if the company wasn’t getting a good return on investment.
Be sure to check out my previous article, Introducing Elyssa Conley Digital and Email Marketing Service