Top 5 Email📧 Marketing Myths Debunked 2021

Debunking Marketing Myths

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Email is more than just a form of communication, it’s an identity in this digital realm — A way to communicate & authenticate yourself. But when did it become such an integral part of our lives?

To understand let’s go back in time a little ⌛
One of the earliest examples was on a program called ‘Mailbox’ in computers of MIT in 1965. Users used to leave messages for others who would log-on to the computers. And this is what set the base of what email is today
Fast-forward ⏩ 50 years, over 3.9 billion users worldwide have an email ID and with over 293.6 billion emails sent every day! Making Email an integral part of marketing mix for brands.

So what it means for customers? Brands are competing within the Mailbox to capture the attention & stay differentiated from hundreds of other emails.

This has led to a drop in open rates, lack of engagements on email. Which in turn led to email marketing being surrounded by a lot of myths. And I am here to debunk 5 popular myths about email marketing. But before we start here are some mind-blowing 🤯 stats before we start::

• 99% of consumers check their emails at least once every day
• 59% of respondents say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions.
• At least 5 out of 10 emails were spam in 2019

Myth #1 Email marketing is dead💀

The number of search query’s for “Is Email marketing dead” are on an all-time high

Why? Dropping attention span (An adult typically pays attention to one task for about eight seconds) has impacted the engagement rates, which has the marketers worried.

Although, contrary to popular belief each article on the search results page claims that email marketing is not dead.

But here some stats to evaluate the myth yourself:

• Email marketing is the king of the marketing kingdom with a 3800% ROI and $38💰 for every $1 spent — Campaign Monitor
• McKinsey supports the data as well, stating that email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than social media
• 80% of business professionals believe that email marketing increases customer retention
• 78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months

Myth #2 Email can only be sent once

Marketers are always running to create engaging content for each email for subscribers hoping that the subscribers will love it, & engagement rate will go through the roof.

But sadly, on average 80% of subscribers won’t even open the email we send.🙁 Check out the open rates industry-wise comparison by Mailchimp.

Solution? Sometimes all that’s needed is a second chance to get your email the love it deserves. A popular hack is to resent the original to subscribers who didn’t open.

Do keep these things in mind when re-sending:

• Change the subject line
• Schedule it for a few days later

Myth #3 Email is free

A common belief about email marketing is ‘Email is free, anybody can do it, how difficult can it be? I send emails all the time 📝’.

But more often than not it’s not the case, email marketing like any other communication medium requires research, insights gathering & creative writing all of which are needed to build & align with a brand image, increase engagement rates & stay out of the spam box.

Here are some important steps for drafting an email:

• Gather insights on subscribers & personalize🕵️‍♂️
• Adhere to brand tone
• Build a brand template (helps recollection!)
• Remember to check for responsiveness

Myth #4 Sending too many emails will annoy 😒 your audience.

Does sending emails frequently increase the chance of landing in spam? The answer is NO! An average user receives less than 5 relevant emails each day. So there is always space for your relevant email!

How do you stay relevant? Customers love personalisations in every communication they receive. Sending personalized communication increases the open rate & lays down the groundwork for building a loyal brand follower.

This brings us to the important question, just how many emails are right? Majority of the email marketing leaders send between one and two emails a week. Send too few your customers get disengaged, send too much & land in spam box.

Here’s an important case study📘 on this: Alchemy Worx analyzed Aviva Insurance’s email frequency and they found some real marketing gems. In their study, they discovered that when Aviva’s email sends increased from one annual renewal email to monthly sends and even multiple monthly sends to certain segments, it quadrupled both their unique clicks and total clicks. That increase in email sending frequency also resulted in a 48% increase in prospects requesting quotes and improved their email revenue by 45%.

The most important part hence is to make sure emails are unique, consistent & personalized every time which increases the value perceived by customers.

Myth #5 Setting up email automation is expensive🤯

Email marketing automation may sound intimidating, but when done correctly, it can increase double, quadruple your sales & reduce the amount of effort needed to nudge users.

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Automation helps take away the manual work required each time to send relevant information to your subscribers at the right time. This can help target customers using your website/app analytics with your email marketing platform, to target people based on behaviour, preferences, and previous sales.

• 90% of consumers find personalized content very or somewhat appealing.
• 91% of consumers are more likely to patronize businesses that provide individualized recommendations and offers.
• A recent experiment revealed that when shoppers knew an ad was based on their activity on the site, their click-through rates increased by 11% and revenue from the product grew by 38%.
• In 2019, 72% of customers only respond to marketing messages that target their interests.

To scale your email marketing it’s important to leverage the automation tools which are both easy to use and affordable such as Mailchimp, Drip, AWeber, ActiveCampaign etc.

At the end of the day, the most important thing is to look at your customer data for answers. What will work for one marketer may not work for another, so it’s critical to test and improve your email📧 process constantly.