Email marketing is credited with producing the best ROI of all digital channels. Research suggests that every pound invested in it will produce an average of 38 pounds in return. Its effectiveness has improved over the years, and email address remains an individual's unique footprint in the digital space. According to Statista, there are 3.7 billion email users in the world today, with the number predicted to grow to 4.3 billion by 2022.
From B2B marketing perspective, email channel allows buyers to be contacted, engaged, educated or prompted to action. Costs are often lower when compared to other digital channels. So it comes as no surprise that small and mid-sized businesses are eager to implement email marketing. It is usually with a view of supporting sales, maintaining reputation, improving loyalty and other aspects of their business.
A popular piece of advice is to start by choosing the appropriate email marketing tool. And for sure, it's an important step.
Email marketing tools have made it possible to run large-scale campaigns faster, to build and manage contact bases, and track results in terms of opens, clicks and conversions. They enabled email marketing automation, data synchronization, scoring systems and other advanced capabilities.
However, if launching an email marketing program is seen as only a matter of having and operating tools, it will not take long before difficulties start popping out. Content and editing are equally important to have, and will often make a difference between the outstanding and poor newsletter campaigns. Too strong focus on technical aspects, with too little understanding of content and editing can impair email projects at the very start.
It is through professional content and editing that messaging is carved out, and audiences served with what they find relevant. Those are the fine communication layers that no tools can produce, and they are essential to any successful email marketing campaign. Professional editing capacity takes time to acquire. It takes experience and practice to be able to plan, shape and execute email marketing content properly. It goes for text pieces, infographics, illustrations and video clips.
Still, it happens that companies and organizations employ email marketing solutions that are not suitable for their current editorial capacity. Such organizations are usually weak in terms of content production process. Their marketing teams are small or still in the making, and they can't feed the requirements of robust, complex email marketing processes. As a result, email campaigns get stuck and are never sent out.
If your organization has some traits such as these, it is smart to think twice before investing in robust and expensive tools which will be hard to fully utilise. On the other hand, there are small companies that run remarkable email campaigns for themselves. Their campaigns are usually the work of one or two people, with an optimal set of assets and skills, in which tools and technologies are important, but are not the only component that drives success. They are able to plan and run successful newsletters and other types of email campaigns, and do that continually.
If you’re only just starting with email marketing program for your company or organization, be sure to understand the kind of setup you need, and if you can support it with your current content and editing capacities.
Meet us at MWC19 in Barcelona, or drop us an email to start the conversation on which type of email program would work best for your organization.