Email can do a lot of things. On one hand, it can help you get answers. But on the other hand, it can also make you seethe with righteous fury.
Invented in the 1960s, email certainly is old school. But like the most dedicated student on campus, email still earns the highest grades — and will likely graduate at the top of its class.
The numbers speak for themselves:
- There were approximately 3.7 billion email users around the world in 2017. That figure is expected to reach 4.3 billion by 2022.
- U.S. consumers cite email as their preferred method for brands to reach them.
- Around 60% of B2B professionals say email is the most effective channel when it comes to revenue generation.
- Email is the preferred medium for business communication among 86% of professionals.
- Email is the top channel for customer acquisition and retention, even in the retail/B2C space.
Bottom line: sellers and marketers addicted to email need not apologize. After all, anything that can hold a story will be used to sell something. From books to billboards, and from texting to tweets, every medium able to convey a message inevitably becomes a sales tool.
Obviously, email is no exception. The moment they started using it, brands got hooked — including a good portion of their audience.
That’s because email is simple, flexible, scalable, and effective — offering tons of value for both sides of the communication process. Despite decades of use and abuse behind it, email remains one of the most potent tools for selling.
Not surprisingly, email spend among businesses is expected to balloon from $270 million in 2015 to a whopping $350 million in 2019.
But before placing your share in that insane pool of cash, hear the downside.
Email is awesome, but the trouble is —
- Not everyone wants to hear a tale — tall or otherwise — all the time or from just about any sender.
- Dark-souled practitioners continue to abuse the medium to the point that spam, privacy laws, data protection, and the negative rap surrounding email marketing complicate the otherwise benign practice of engaging your audience through digital mail.
The rules of the game are changing and the tables have turned. As businesses struggle to get their bearings in the Age of the Customer, sales and marketing teams need to build a new playbook for every element of their email process.
A Smarter Approach for an Empowered Audience
The shifting technology and business landscape transforms brands. But it also empowers the buyer. For your emails to succeed, they need to resonate with the unique stories of your audience and should reach them only in their own terms.
There are new regulations (such as the General Data Protection Regulation) to comply with as well as new best practices (authentication, permissions, sender reputation, engagement metrics, etc.) to adopt.
Meanwhile, breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and machine learning provide new muscle and insight on how best to get the most from email — whether you use it to build relationships, achieve results, or propel revenue.
Conclusion
Email is an effective communication tool but ranks among the most controversial issues in marketing, privacy, and data protection. In today’s user-centric economy, the calculus favors your audience and having a legitimate email sent to the spam folder is infinitely more acceptable than malicious spam finding its way to the inbox. Time to up your game with best practices that increase the likelihood your emails reach their intended destination.
