Is Email Marketing Dead?

Let’s get one thing straight from the start: Email marketing is not dead. As a marketing leader evaluating your own strategy, however, you may be wondering if you need to reach customers beyond the subject line with more innovative tactics.

Even with rampant advancements in digital marketing trends and technologies (e.g. influencer marketing, artificial intelligence, etc.), email is still a strong, highly used approach for marketers in all industries—one that you can’t afford to leave on the table for your own business.

In fact, GetApp’s 2022 Email and Social Media Marketing Survey [*] revealed that 100% of respondents use email as part of their marketing initiatives, making it the number one marketing channel alongside social media.

The data and consensus from professionals is clear: Even with a myriad of new marketing channels like short-form video and live streaming erupting in popularity, email remains a tried and true tactic due to its clear benefits, versatility, and ubiquitous nature.

In this article, we’ll explore why people may be wondering if email marketing is dead along with more findings from our survey as well as insights from an email marketing expert.

So, why are people even asking this question? Is it due to the emergence of all those new channels now available to marketers? As we mentioned already, email is used amongst organizations of all sizes and industries, so it’s clearly not dead. Is it on the decline though?

Apologies to all the email haters out there, but the answer is still no.

Not only are businesses still using email, they are exploring new ways to take advantage of it as well. In fact, 87% of survey respondents are willing to experiment with new email marketing tactics. On top of that:

We spoke with Dan Rauchwerk [1], board member of Atlanta Rescue Dog Cafe (ARDC) and email marketer of over 10 years, to get his take, and he had this to say when posed the question: 

“Every channel has its place and email is a great owned channel, especially in a world of constantly changing needs and algorithms and different companies owning different pieces of the marketing ecosystem."

- Dan Rauchwerk, Atlanta Rescue Dog Cafe Board Member

Having a fully owned channel that isn’t beholden to the whims of other forces in the marketing world—one that remains consistent in the face of ever-changing needs—is a powerful tool indeed. This allows you to engage in experimental tactics like personalized emails, outside-the-box customer engagement initiatives, and fully segmented campaigns.

Don’t take it from us though. Dan will speak more on that below, but let’s get started with some of the benefits of a strong email marketing approach.

Free or low-cost channel

The first benefit that comes to mind is that email is a free or low-cost marketing channel. If you’re a nonprofit or newly minted startup with limited resources, taking advantage of inexpensive opportunities to reach your target audience is crucial.

You can build an email list, develop messaging that can also be used on other channels like social media, start sending emails to your customers, collect valuable data to inform your strategy’s development, establish an email newsletter cadence, etc. All this is possible without spending any extra money whatsoever. 

High ROI

Even with all the other options out there, email is still the marketing channel with the highest ROI. According to our survey data, over a third (34%) of businesses get 21-40% of their total business revenue from email alone.

Furthermore, 68% of respondents get at least a 1,000% return on investment for every dollar spent on email marketing, with a portion of those getting as high as a 4,900% ROI. Yes, you read that right.

Email is a fully owned channel

Aside from being free to start and yielding the highest ROI of any marketing channel, email is also a fully owned channel for your business. Dan notes this as being especially important compared to other channels where you’re constrained to third parties:

“If you're working on SEO or social media marketing, which are certainly important channels, you do have less control because [platforms] can release an update which can throw your strategy into a bit of a panic.”

This relative lack of unexpected changes to the email marketing landscape makes email much more consistent over time. This means you can continue improving your email marketing strategy without worrying about your tactics potentially being invalidated.

Preferred customer communication channel

Consumers face a lot of communication these days, much of which comes from businesses. Tactics like SMS via mobile device can feel too personal and are still gaining acceptance from consumers, but Dan notes that people are used to receiving promotional emails. They’ve been doing so for a long time.

Email is still the main customer communication channel across different types of businesses and industries. For instance, things like transactional emails that provide receipts or messages that alert existing customers of sales are now not only accepted, they’re expected.

To have a well-rounded email marketing strategy, it’s a good idea to explore other top channels and latch onto the ones that yield an outsized impact on your business results. Let’s discuss each of these popular channels now and how they may be able to help your marketing efforts when combined with a solid email approach.

Social media

One of the major draws of social media is the ability to find your target audience where they congregate. Additionally, aside from email marketing, it’s the only channel that’s used by 100% of survey respondents [*]. This means consumers expect businesses to be present on social media. And if you’re not? They may go elsewhere.

Social is also a preferred communication channel for many customers. Based on the platforms you choose to operate on, it’s the best way to reach people in different demographic and firmographic areas reliably and effectively.

Much like email, social is also a big revenue driver for organizations of all sizes. In fact, 19% of our survey respondents derive 21-30% of their total revenue just from social media. Coupled with email, this represents over half of all revenue generated just from these two marketing channels.

Content marketing and SEO

The connection between content marketing and SEO is becoming more powerful than ever. As a resource-constrained small business or startup, you must utilize what you create in as many areas as possible, so it stands to reason that creating great written content with strong SEO value will pull double duty in supporting your marketing efforts.

It’s ok to start small and produce a limited number of articles per month to test the waters. You’ll quickly find that targeting long tail keywords in a less competitive niche will yield an outsized impact on your brand’s reach. Content production coupled with mindful use of SEO will continue to amplify this strategy over time.

The best part? You can parlay that written content into other formats with our next option.

Creative asset production

Another tactic (the importance of which cannot be overstated) is creative asset production. This can refer to producing content like images, videos, infographics, etc. for use in email or other digital marketing campaigns.

One effective strategy is the creation of both long- and short-form videos to share on social media which can then be converted into written blog content using transcripts from the videos. This strategy dovetails three separate marketing tactics into one cohesive strategy that will save you time and money while producing outstanding results.

Whether you’re about to start exploring email for the first time or you have a thriving email newsletter and want to take your strategy to the next level, there are tools out there that can help you accomplish that. The best part? You may not even have to invest from the get-go.

Dan points out that popular email platforms often don’t charge if you have a smaller number of subscribers. Since it's also a good practice to keep your list clean of inactive email users, you can use this to your advantage. Not only will you save money, you’ll also maintain a higher quality list of email subscribers that are more likely to engage with your content.

Other features to look out for include advanced newsletter functionality, automated triggers, and integrations with other tools in your tech stack. For a curated list of some of the best options, visit our article on the 10 Best Email Marketing Software tools.

An example of an automated trigger workflow from Customer.io

Not only is email marketing alive and well, it’s one of the channels you should be most focused on. In the face of new trends and tactics popping up constantly, however, it can be tempting to put something as traditional as email on the backburner. 

If you do though? You’re putting yourself at a disadvantage by ignoring such a lucrative channel. Bring your email approach to the forefront by experimenting with new tactics and formulating a baseline strategy that highlights other complementary channels.

In short, having a consistent, fully owned channel as a lynchpin to bolster your overall strategy can only lead to greater success now and in the long run.