Email marketing has been around since 1978 when Gary Thuerk sent out the first-ever blast to 400 recipients, hoping to promote computers. This resulted in a $13 million increase in sales, and the rest was history. In this article, we will be analyzing the pros and cons of email marketing in today’s day and age.
Pros of Email Marketing
Here are 3 main pros of email marketing. These are why marketers continue to use this method to promote their brand and business, despite so many other modern marketing strategies available these days.
1. Cost-effective
Even though there are other forms of marketing, such as social media marketing, which are considered comparatively cheap, email marketing triumphs over them due to the sheer simplicity of this method. Being cost-effective is one of the top advantages of email marketing when comparing the pros and cons of email marketing. It ensures that the time and effort in this marketing method are not wasted. How so? That is because email marketing only targets those recipients who have signed up and agreed to receive advertisements via email. This means the chances of availing your offers and products are much higher than they would otherwise be.
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Furthermore, it is also free and simple to change the layout of the email you wish to send out. It does not require high levels of editing using costly software or special permissions from, let’s say, TV channels or billboard owners that you would if you were marketing some other way. Hence, the cost-effective nature of email marketing has made the top of our list of pros and cons of email marketing.
2. Easily Measurable
Due to the wide availability of web analytics software, we can test out an entire spectrum of ideas for our email marketing campaigns before sending out the email blast. This way, the optimization of the email marketing technique can be ensured without collateral damage to your brand or company. A/B testing is one of the most frequently used methods and is always at the forefront when a need arises to test the pros and cons of email marketing.
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Moreover, data analytics can also be tracked and measured once you have already sent your email blast. This way, you can keep an eye on the customers that have more potential to bring you profit by seeing if and when they open/respond to your emails. In the future, unique customizations can be made to the emails being sent to them to increase the chances of grasping their interest in whatever product or service you are trying to market to them.
3. Environmentally Friendly
Unlike most other forms of marketing, one of the advantages of email marketing is that it requires no use of paper or factory machines. The entire process of sending out an email marketing blast, along with any tweaks or changes that need to be made, can be done from a simple laptop or desktop computer - maybe even a mobile phone! Out of all the pros and cons of email marketing, this one is probably the most obvious and overlooked one of all.
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Being environmentally friendly is one of the big pros of email marketing because it helps filter in people who are conscious about their usage of products based on whether or not their production harms the environment. Such environmentalists primarily hunt out companies that minimize their carbon footprint and adverse environmental effects. Hence, this factor is essential when considering the pros and cons of email marketing.
Cons of Email Marketing
Despite so many advantages, this marketing method has certain disadvantages. After all, it is usually used by businesses in conjunction with other techniques. Let’s discuss 3 of the cons of email marketing.
1. The Spam Issue
Perhaps the most tricky part of email marketing is ensuring that your emails are not considered spam when received by potential customers. The spam issue always comes up when discussing the advantages and disadvantages of email marketing. To do so, they need to be carefully crafted and worded to avoid any sort of spam keywords. The list of recipients also needs to be carefully curated, so they do not get annoyed and want to unsubscribe. Email marketing and privacy laws need to be taken under consideration first and foremost when about to go through with email marketing if one wants to be at the top of their game regarding the pros and cons of email marketing.
This is one of the deepest disadvantages of email marketing because it can wreck the entire purpose of email marketing regardless of what pros of email marketing may exist.
2. The Strong Need for Consistency
Your marketing campaign includes billboards and TV advertisements. Yes, it will cost a lot, but once done, your advertisements will be visible to a vast population constantly and for a long time. The same is not the case with email marketing. You can craft the most optimum email marketing campaign, putting in all your efforts in all areas required, and still, it may go unnoticed for the most part.
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That is why, to increase the chances of your marketing campaign being as effective as you would like it to be, you need to be consistent with your emails. You also need to be consistent with the formatting of your emails - it needs to be according to the latest trends; the file sizes need to be small and easily downloadable too! Otherwise, the spam issue will take effect. Here it is clear how the pros and cons of email marketing are very interlinked to each other.
3. Low Audience to Conversion Ratio
This is one of the usually overlooked disadvantages of email marketing. Still, the truth is that it circumvents even the most substantial advantages of email marketing. Even the most successful email marketing campaigns have a 20% audience to 1-2% conversion ratio. When competing with worldwide monopolies and international brands, this ratio is mostly as significant as non-existent. However, if your competition is smaller brands and companies and your email marketing campaigns are doing well, then in this battle of the pros and cons of email marketing, the pros still have a chance of winning.
So, at the end of the day, it comes down to knowing where you already stand in the market when deciding whether email marketing is the correct path to take for you. All the pros and cons of email marketing need to be noted, along with their interlinked nature. Some key points that you should consider include:
- The number of competitors for your product/service
- Nature of your competitors (monopoly/monopolistic competition/oligopoly etc)
- The forecasted success rate of your marketing campaign according to data analytics
A Bonus Tip
Successful entrepreneurs know that any form of digital marketing can only be effective if a business has a professionally-built website that showcases its products and services. Companies that use email marketing in conjunction with a beautiful and responsive website can bear the fruits and benefits of this technique.
After all, when you send out marketing emails, you must include links. Those links should direct the users to a place that represents your business. What can be a better online platform to give out information and promote your products or services than a website of your own? The pros and cons of email marketing can all be summed up into this: use newsletters in combination with a beautiful website to make your campaigns irresistible.
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Web development is not as complicated and costly as it used to be about a decade ago. Using Strikingly, a rising website building platform, you can create an appealing website all by yourself. Not only that, but you can also send out attractive newsletters through your Strikingly editor by simply taking the following steps.
- Go to the dashboard and click ‘Newsletters’.
- You will see your website’s audience list on the next page. Select the recipients of your emails.
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- After selecting the recipients, enter your email content in the editor that appears.
- You have the option to send a test email to yourself to see what exactly your newsletter will look like to the recipients.
- Send out your newsletter.
It’s really as simple as that. We not only provide you with ready-to-use website templates but also fancy newsletter layouts that help you regulate your email marketing campaigns. It’s a lot more convenient to focus on building business marketing strategies and tracking your sales when the technical side of your website is being taken care of. We handle all the technical issues at the backend at Strikingly so that you can enjoy an error-free website building and maintaining experience.
You can try out our tools by signing up for a free account with us today.
