Email Marketing Continues Massive Growth Trend
The number of marketing channels and strategies available to brands has skyrocketed in the last decade, and there doesn’t seem to be any sign of this trend slowing. Emerging options involving artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT), combined with ever-increasing and detailed customer data, can make it seem as though older techniques will lose out in the quest for finding the highest ROI.
Email marketing, often found in a debate about whether it’s “dead” or not, is one of those techniques. Despite its relative age, though, a new report from Salesforce says that email marketing is not simply just alive – it’s booming.
Email Marketing Sees 83% Growth Since 2015
According to Salesforce’s fourth annual State of Marketing report, email marketing has grown 83 percent in the last two years. When considering B2C markets alone, email marketing has increased by 106 percent since 2015, only being surpassed by the incredible growth of video:
Also, a whopping 89 percent of the 3,500 global marketing leaders surveyed for the report indicate they’re already using email marketing or will be implementing it in the next 12 months. That means email will be a bigger focus than video advertising, paid search and even organic search:
Seventy-three percent of marketers also stated they plan to use email campaign management tools over the next two years, and Salesforce predicts a 23 percent year-over-year growth rate in the use of email marketing technologies.
But Doesn’t Email Have Low ROI?
People are inundated with email these days, and it can be easy to think everybody simply deletes or unsubscribes from marketing emails if that’s what you find yourself typically doing with them. Also, many marketers have tried out email campaigns only to end up with very low open and clickthrough rates, leading to the perception that email seriously underperforms when it comes to lead generation and ROI. Despite all this, however, many brands have seen huge successes with email, and the strategy has actually grown because of its ROI. When done correctly, some estimate that for every $1 spent on email marketing, a brand can see $38 in ROI.
Also, email will continue its massive growth trend not in spite of advancing technologies but because of them. According to the Salesforce report, one of the most important elements of marketing in 2017 personalization. Businesses are leveraging improved targeting and segmentation to provide unique, personalized customer journeys – and customers are beginning to expect this. According to the report, “static messages can give the impression that a company doesn’t see customers as individuals. For example, if a customer has already purchased a necklace via an email offer, but continues to see the exact same necklace advertised on social platforms, the customer could infer that the company doesn’t know (or care) that she already purchased the item and doesn’t value her business.”
Luckily, email is perfect for providing a personal experience with a brand. Emerging technologies and big data will allow email to combine with other marketing strategies and provide the most optimal, personalized marketing efforts possible, leading to better awareness, engagement and acquisition:
Ever-improving marketing automation tools will also allow marketers to save time on email campaigns and ensure they’re optimally integrated into other marketing efforts for maximum ROI. In other words, email marketing isn’t just growing, it’s evolving to become an essential part of effective marketing plans that seamlessly combine disparate strategies into unified campaigns.