Is Email Dead?

We hear it all the time that email is dead, yet companies continue to use it to gain leads and drive traffic to their sites. As is the case, the truth may be exaggerated, and we have some statistics to back that up.

What the Statistics Say about Email Marketing

Emails are still a great way to reach your audience. In 2019, global email users amounted to 3.9 billion users and is expected to climb to over half of the world’s population by 2023. That doesn’t sound dead to us. On top of that, 78% of marketers have reported a growth in email engagement in the last year.

How to Breathe Life Back into Your Email Marketing Efforts

Thankfully, there are many ways you can resuscitate your eNewsletter by developing a solid marketing strategy. Here are some ideas to get you started.

• Make it noteworthy. Why are you sending the email? Is there a purpose or are you just trying to send as many emails as you can without a clear strategy? We call this the spray and pray method. If your email doesn’t have a purpose, why should your readers feel any different? Give your emails a reason to be sent and a reason to be read. It might seem nice to send out a monthly or weekly email to check-in but if you’re not seeing any leads or actions taken, your emails might be more of a bother than a lead-builder.
• Be creative. Simply put, don’t be boring. The important thing is to write engaging copy to stay in front of your customers. Corporate emails can come across as self-promoting and yes, the main idea is to promote your company, product, and services—but what is in it for your audience? Get creative with your emails. Don’t be afraid to try something different. You can always experiment with subject lines, headers, messaging, and imagery through A/B testing and segmentation—it doesn’t have to send to your entire email list.
• Make it pretty. Have you ever gotten a wall-of-text email that was just simply too much to read? That would make anyone want to hit that unsubscribe button right away. We’ve seen our fair share of those types of emails over the years. There’s a reason why tl;dr exists. Take into consideration how other companies are killing it (pun intended) with their email sends. We live in a world with so much information at our fingertips. Give your reader something to hold on to. Come up with user-friendly layouts and bitesize tidbits of information. With the increasing advances in technology, it’s easier to jazz up your emails with graphics and interactive content that can be easily read on smartphones and tablets.
• Personalize it. There are many ways to personalize your emails that add a little touch of humanity to your messaging. Even some of the most basic mail marketing software platforms have options to add subscriber’s names in subject lines, greetings, and more using variables that pull in from your lists.
• Be timely. Consider all factors when you send out your email communications and use best practices to send emails at desired times. More than half of us check our emails the first thing in the morning, most times on a smartphone. Don’t wait until the moment has passed to send out a communication, especially in the times we live in with our 24/7 news cycle.
• Weed through your email lists. In the spirit of spring cleaning, do some email list pruning. Depending on your emails list database and the service you use to send your emails, you could be missing out on a lot of useful features. Many email services have options to weed out and delete users at the click of a mouse. You can also create segmented lists and groups that allow you to send specific information to lists.

Need Help Getting Started?

The key to eNewsletter marketing success is developing a solid playbook. We’re here to help. Synapse has helped hundreds of companies grow leads and win big through email marketing. We develop custom, data-driven solutions to help your business succeed.