Is Email Marketing Still Relevant?

In recent time there is a lot of talk about email marketing as dying art. The evident of social media have made many pundits to augur that email marketing would lose its place as a preferred online marketing tool. I still believe that email to in-house lists is the most effective forms of online advertising. I am in Digital marketing since last five years and I have used email marketing to in-house lists with open rate as good as 20%.


Here are some facts about Email Marketing:
1.Despite spam, almost 80 percent of consumers subscribe to receive messages from companies.
2.45 percent of U.S. email users think that "e-mail is a great way for companies to stay in touch
3.Most B2C and B2B marketers expect the impact of email marketing to increase in coming days.
4.U.S. Internet users spend 15 percent of total Internet time one mail.
5.Email has among the highest return on investment (ROI) index of all marketing channels.

Figure: Integration of web presence using email

Following are some of Advantages of email marketing:
1. It is Inexpensive: Email is far less expensive on a cost-per-contact basis than other advertising options, including banner ads, print advertising, and telemarketing.
2. Email Marketing Campaign Results are Measurable: Reports can be generated on the number of emails opened by your recipients (open-ups) and the number of times your embedded links were clicked (click-throughs).

Figure:Sample of Report

3. Email Has Wide Reach: Email is most widely reached medium of the internet. People access their mails on mobile as well, hence you can reach customer any where anytime.
4. Email Drives Web Site Traffic and Lead generation: Links in mail can drive traffic to website and embedded “call to actions” can help us in generating leads.
5. Email Strengthens Brand Recall: Regularly delivered email messages that contain properly titled subject lines and logos reinforce company and product awareness.