“Is Email Marketing Dead?”

This obnoxious question is usually raised when people discuss Email Marketing. My friend, if you’re planning to be an email marketer, let me assure you – Email Marketing is not dead (trust me bro).

To make my case strong, here are some boring facts for you –

1. 96% of consumers check their email every single day
2. 86% of professionals use emails to communicate business related information.

In fact, there’s a dedicated website ‘Email is not dead’ which shares resources about the effectiveness of email marketing.  

Sure, email is largely adopted by people, but is it actually good for building your brand awareness? Let’s figure it out

The Case Against Email Marketing

1. Deliverability

The problem with Marketers is that once they find something that works, they’ll exploit it to the fullest.

When businesses realised that people checked their emails on a regular basis, they began to bombard customers with salesy and promotional emails.

Email servers have improved dramatically over the years, so that salesy and fraudulent emails now end up in the spam folder (pro tip: if you receive an email from a Nigerian prince promising you millions if you pay him a small amount, ignore it).

If your campaign emails are landing in the promotion tab/spam, it’s less likely that your recipient would read that.

2. Shareability

What happens when you come across a great meme on Instagram? You tend to share it with your friends. Shareability is what makes social media platforms lively.

When was the last time you forwarded a newsletter to your friends? Probably never!

The problem with newsletters (emails) is that even if someone likes it, they would rarely share it with other people (as it is not convenient to share it with multiple people). In case of social media posts, sharing can be done in a few clicks.

So, if you are creating a newsletter to build awareness for your brand, it would not help you as much as doing it on social media.

3. Readability

Let’s be honest, we don’t read all the emails that we receive, do we?

Everyday your target customer is bombarded with emails from other businesses, content creators, and their colleagues.

It’s practically not feasible for them to go through each and every single email. To make life easier, the email servers automatically places newsletters into promotions/updates tab (if you’re using Gmail).

Only once in a blue moon, someone’s newsletter lands into the primary inbox rather than categories.

The underlying lesson is that even if you create fantastic content, there’s a good chance your prospect will never open the email (as their inbox is flooded with other newsletters and junk emails).

The Correct Way Of Using Email Marketing

After reading the drawbacks, if you feel that email marketing is an ineffective channel for brands, then you need hold your horses!

If used correctly, emails can do wonders for your brand.

Let’s find out how to do that.

Emails are for nurturing audience not attracting!

As you already know, newsletters lack shareability. So, you should craft your emails, such that it creates helps in connecting your audience with your brand!

Most brands just use emails to bombard their audience with their promotional offers, ugh!

I wholeheartedly believe that companies should configure their initial emails to familiarize the customers with the brands – it could be done by sharing stories, testimonials, and much more! Once they start relating with you, then you can initiate selling.

You can only expect your audience to be your evangelists, when they actually resonate with your brand!

I could not stress this enough – use emails to nurture your audience and then use it for your promotional offers. Infact it is much easier to sell to someone who believes in you rather than someone who’s skeptical.

Here is how your funnel should look like

Attract audience

Use blog, social media, ads for this

Nurture audience

Use emails to nurture the audience that you attracted using the aforesaid mediums

Sell

Once your audience is nurtured and resonates with your brand, then focus on selling your offering.

And folks that’s how you make the most of email marketing.

BTW, I have also created my newsletter for sharing my learnings about Marketing and Self Development. If you found value in my article, consider subscribing to my email – you’ll love it (pinky swear).

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Key Takeaways –

1 It is easier to sell to a loyal nurtured audience than cold skeptic audience

2 Use emails to nurture your existing audience rather than attracting new audience

3 Challenges of using emails are readability, deliverability and shareability

4 Subscribe to my newsletter, if you haven’t already (it’s free for now)

If you have any feedback, question, remarks – feel free to share it in the comments section.

Yours Truly,
Darshil Dhandh