Email marketing - does it even work?

Email is among the oldest methods of online communication. So naturally, email marketing is among the oldest and most widely used methods marketers employ to reach their customers digitally. The appeal of email marketing is obvious – it’s cheap to run, and marketers can reach large chunks of their target audience with the click of a button. There’s also the opportunity to segment customer groups and a host of metrics that provide accurate and immediate information about the success (or otherwise) of campaigns.

An overview of email marketing's pros and cons. Source: Belch and Belch 2019, Chapter 11

But email marketing also has inherent characteristics that jar with developments in social media marketing theory. Researchers widely agree that mass methods of communication are much less effective than personalised, one-to-one strategies that are more engaging to customers. Of course it’s still possible to achieve this through email marketing, but by doing so marketers move away from the low-cost, high-reach qualities that make email marketing so attractive in the first place.

Despite its ubiquity in social media marketing strategies, the path to success using email is relatively narrow. Marketing professor and author Jonah Berger provides six STEPPS for digital marketers to incorporate into their email communications to facilitate sharing:

· Social currency – people share thoughts, opinions and interests based on their desire for social approval, and to make themselves look good

· Triggers – memorable campaigns are more likely to catch on

· Emotion – high degrees of arousal and activation that messages can draw from a customer spread best

· Public visibility – messages should be “built to show”, i.e. designed to share

· Practical value – functional value which strengthens social bonds through relevance

· Stories – campaigns should align with overall brand messaging and actions, by making promises and keeping them

Johan Berger. Image: Forbes

Berger’s steps all appear relatively simple to implement at face value. But check your own email inbox to see how effective the brands you interact with are at extracting a response, whether that’s a forward/reply, click to a website, or a purchase.

If your inbox is anything like mine, there’s probably a spam or promotions folder with a bunch of unread messages resting in bold font unactioned – and the ones that have been opened have very low conversion rates. Does email marketing even work?

Anyone else? Email inboxes can feel like a whole lotta spam.

That question drags us back to the original premise of email marketing: its cost-benefit ratio. Ultimately, even a tiny portion of conversions from an email campaign is likely to give a positive ROI, because the cost relative to its reach is so low.

So while it’s unglamorous, old-fashioned, and in some cases seems unsophisticated – email marketing is surely here to stay while it remains a crucial part of interaction in the digital world.