This year will mark the 45th birthday of the first-ever email. In the fast-paced world of the ever-evolving Internet, it’s somewhat miraculous that email continues to be a cornerstone in our digital marketing strategy even today. Email marketing, in fact, is still one of the most powerful tactics you can leverage online — and we’ve got 5 reasons you need to make it part of your strategy, right now.
1. Everyone has an email address.
Think about the last time you registered on a website, made an online purchase or set up a new profile. What information was required? It’s a near-guarantee that you were asked for your email address. Even the Web’s most prominent sites — Google, Facebook, Amazon — all ask for your email address to sign in. This gateway alone continues to force the growth of consumer email accounts among users of all ages, genders, races, locations and more.
[bctt tweet=”Total #email accounts expected to grow beyond 4.3 billion by the end of 2016.”]With that in mind, it’s no shocker that 92% of online adults use email (Pew Research). Or, that the total number of email accounts worldwide is expected to grow beyond 4.3 billion by the end of 2016 (Radicati Group). Email is literally a consumer’s key to unlocking the Internet and marketers can leverage that to achieve greater reach than with any other medium.
2. Users actually see the messages.
Forrester Research recently reported that 90% of email is delivered to the inbox while only 2% of Facebook fans see Pages’ posts in their News Feeds. That dramatic difference keeps marketers and brands alike coming back to email over and over again.
The consumer addiction to devices has also played a huge role in boosting our reach and exposure through email. In fact, checking email has ranked as the most frequently performed activity on mobile devices for quite some time. Add in that a huge chunk of the population carries a smartphone at almost all times — and you have direct access to your audience anywhere, anytime.
[bctt tweet=”Maintain direct access to your audience anywhere, anytime. #emailmarketing”]3. Opt ins boost engagement.
The simple process of growing your email list typically aims to ensure that your audience is genuinely interested in the content you send. The result: white hat practices can help you to achieve better engagement rates than many other media.
[bctt tweet=”Growing your list? Be clear that users are signing up to receive #email.”]When growing your list, be sure to make it clear that users are signing up to receive email. Then, once they’ve been added, consistently deliver the type of content that is expected. By maintaining a valuable, trustworthy relationship with your email list audience, those engagement rates will continue to skyrocket!
4. Your list can make you money.
Promotions and offers delivered via email — especially when mentioned in the subject line — increase open and click-through rates exponentially. What’s even better — they can increase your ROI too.
Monetizing websites and content isn’t anything new, but in recent months, more and more opportunities to monetize your email messages, newsletters and more have come onto the scene. These tools allow you to inject ads directly into your email HTML. When your reader clicks the ad, you earn a commission! It’s a super simple strategy for gaining even more value from your email list — as if it wasn’t already valuable enough!
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