Pssssst. Email is here to stay. Sorry if Slack is your jam. Too bad if texting is all there is for you. Chances are email is already a huge part of your world, and it’s getting more interesting as a tool.
Speaking at Engage Conference in March 2019, Jose Cebrian, Senior Vice President of Digital Messaging for Merkle reports U.S. email users reached 255 million in 2019. 91% of internet users use it, and 76% of the overall population is on board with email. And, no surprise, once it becomes a part of our working lives, we become addicted to it.
- 90% check email compulsively
- 76% take a look every morning
- 56% can’t resist a peek right before sleeping.
Email is consumed across all age groups. Multiple daily users increase from ages 13-18 and remain consistently high from age 33 onward. Email, your blessing and your curse, remains one of the most powerful marketing tools available.
25% of email users take action after receiving a promotional email
Marketers never lost faith in the power of email as new technology arrived. 88% use it to engage customers, and most in-house marketers say email’s ROI is ‘good’ or ‘excellent’.
The proliferation of email optimization tools takes the tedium out of email tasks and offers highly granular data on email marketing results. Imagined constraints of the format (such as mobile open rates and limited scripting and tagging) are not hurdles to success.
According to Cebrian, there is lots to be excited about as better tools evolve. Companies like What Counts, Taxi for Email, Bluecore and Movable Ink are bringing creative solutions and vivid presentations to the old-fashioned email workhorse. The results are much better personalization, greater dynamism of content and improved ROI.
Happening now:
- Interactive email
- Hyper personalization (your name appears on a photo of a beach umbrella in your email!)
- Powerful integration with local data (we see it’s snowing where you are so how about this down jacket?)
- Personalization to your location, map activations for directions
- Notifications with specific relevance to your existing services
- Animation to make headlines and products pop in email
- Countdown timers for special offers
- Digital “Scratch off” offer reveals
- Interactive elements that react on hovers
- Video tutorials – yes!
Email marketing pros are as important to the business model as SEO experts
As “people based marketing” becomes more complex, with customer touch points offered in so many ways, email is still a fierce targeting tool. 29% of email marketers target or retarget subscribers in online advertising, and 27% target customers based on website behavior. That’s why we are all getting so many emails! “Zero In Box” is a myth.
“Email sits at the intersection of scale, control, addressability and speed,” notes Cebrian. “It rates high for speed to market and addressability.”
Sign us up!
Portland native, BA Journalism, former print/digital national sales, now owner of my own digital marketing firm. Focused on optimized content, website branding upgrades, social media integration. Board member, Portland Radio Project (prp.fm) – smart, friendly, local radio, saving democracy as well. Growlers, cycling, frequent rants. https://debhartmandigital.com/