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Yes. Email marketing is still relevant because of it offers control, is affordable, and ROI is easily measured. I have heard the argument, "I just delete my emails". It's not about how many emails you delete. What matters is people subscribe to receive information from you and it is your responsibility to provide it.
Inbound Email Marketing vs Outbound Email Marketing
Inbound marketing is effective because people make the decision to sign up to receive communication from you. In turn, you can build loyalty by providing them with relevant information that they may be interested in.
Outbound marketing is when you try to reach customers that did not voluntarily sign up for your email list. Outbound marketing is considered an aggressive approach to generating leads and is probably why some of us suffer from ad-fatigue.
Trends
Gamification, Pay Per Click (PPC), and Influencers are popular digital marketing tactics. These types of marketing campaigns can also break your budget if you are not careful.
Gamification and PPC you can lose control over who is receiving your message and it can take a while to gather data and redirect before seeing a return on your investment. When using influencers you may be losing some control over how your message is given and received. In other words, the conversation may unintentionally deviate from your branding.
While all three are good and effective, it can be an expensive road to go down before you start to see results.
Control
Inbound email marketing cuts out the noise that you often receive on social media. You can develop a contact list with tags such as
Returning Customer
Anniversary / Birthday
Empty Cart
Inactive Customer
Loyalty Program
Products Purchased
Referral
Met at Trade Show
Region
If you have a good contact list with current customer and lead details, this allows you to control the message and who receives your carefully crafted messages. Segmenting and targeting helps increase your open and click through rates.
Email is the most effective way to reach your target market
Affordable
Email marketing still remains one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing. Pricing ranges from free to $250 a year for email platforms. These platforms allow you to segment your contact list, schedule email distribution, analytics, CRM integration, and website integration.
Content and Contacts
Be thoughtful and considerate when generating email campaigns. Maintain an updated contact list that is integrated with your website, social media, and CRM. When a customer makes a purchase, the information updates your contact list. Automatically tagging your contacts helps you develop content strategies and prevents inbox overload.
Analytics and reporting are critical to developing successful marketing email campaigns, so pay attention to them! Learning how people are reaching your website, what they are interested in, how long they are staying, and reviewing insights and benchmarks is important data to collect. This information can also help support other areas of digital marketing if you decide to purchase ads and PPC's.
Email marketing is still effective and has not died with the dinosaur. Be thoughtful, be relevant, and be helpful with your email campaigns and you should see a return on your marketing efforts fairly quickly.