Is email marketing worth it?
Should I be running email campaigns to my customers?
What should I be writing about?
These are among the most common questions we hear when a business is discussing their marketing strategy.
The answer? Absolutely.
Email marketing has been around for years, but so many businesses overlook its potential.
Put it this way – if you had the chance to get all your customers in a room to talk to them directly about your services and products, would you take it? Of course you would.
That’s the power of email.
Email marketing means you can send your message directly to your customers’ inbox.
In this blog, we’ll be looking at what makes email so powerful and how businesses can utilise it to boost their marketing efforts.
Five benefits of email marketing
Cost effective
Email is one of the marketing strategies that only requires a small monthly cost. Unlike strategies such as Pay Per click (PPC), where a significant monthly ad spend is needed,, emails only require your time, expertise and the cost of holding a database.
Super targeted
With segmentation, unique list building and endless targeting settings, you can reach the right people with the right message. Email platforms give you the opportunity to build and funnel users into lists based on how they’ve interacted with your previous emails. So you can drill down and share information on topics your customers have already shown an interest in.
Drive conversions
Email is a key part of the marketing mix to help drive more sales to your business. It serves as a direct communication between you and your customers to help you promote your services or products. Email can be used to drive traffic to your website, build your social media following and generate a regular, effective touchpoint with your audience.
Easy to measure and track performance
Track your results in real-time. Measuring performance in email is perhaps one of the most transparent and accurate marketing strategies there is. With key stats from open rates and clicks, to heat mapping and subscribers, you can track exactly how your audience is interacting with your content.
Key (and easy) unique touchpoint
Emails provide a unique opportunity to connect with your customers in a way that feels personal, building trust and loyalty.
Almost everyone uses email
Nearly everyone uses email. That’s a huge audience just waiting to hear from you. The number of global email users reached 4.37 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow to 4.89 billion by 2027 (Statista, 2023). (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)
The importance of a strong email subject line
The email subject line is the first thing a user reads, which is the key decider on how they interact with the rest of your email. It determines whether your email gets read, or sent straight to the junk folder.
Those statistics alone should prove just how important it is to get your subject line right.
But the subject line doesn’t work alone.
Most email platforms also show a second line of preview text (sometimes pulled from the email body itself), giving users a snapshot of what’s inside. Together, these two lines are the deciding factor in whether your email earns a click.
The impact of AI on email marketing
AI is everywhere these days, and now it’s appearing in your inbox. Popular email platforms like Google, Apple and Yahoo have now started showing AI email summaries and previews to users.
With these AI-generated previews, control of what your customers see and read is changing. Where marketers are used to strategically planning what’s read first by their audience, these new updates could see that control slip away.
However, that doesn’t mean email can’t work well for your business. All it needs is for businesses to keep their finger on the pulse and stay up to date with these new changes. By prioritising the content in your emails and subject lines, the AI features being introduced shouldn’t hinder your email marketing success.
Key steps to take before sending your first mailshot
Use different email addresses
Using separate email addresses for different types of communication is a best practice that improves both email deliverability and customer trust. Make sure you have a separate marketing/communications email from the one used for purchase orders or online enquiries.
Make sure you have an email marketing database
You can’t send emails without starting with a list of contacts.
You can build your email list in a number of ways, for example:
- Run social media ads with a call to action (CTA) designed to capture emails from your target audience
- Clear forms on your website that, when submitted, filter automatically into an email marketing list
Register your domain for authentication
Registering a domain for authentication requires verifying domain ownership and adding specific domain name system (DNS) records to support secure email delivery.
This process helps email service providers correctly authenticate messages sent from your domain.
Key components of this setup include DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), which adds a digital signature to your emails to verify they haven’t been altered, and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance), which builds on DKIM to provide instructions on how to handle unauthenticated emails, enhancing protection against spoofing and phishing attacks.
What should you write about in your email marketing?
“We don’t have any company news, so what’s the point in sending an email?” is a phrase we hear all too often.
But the truth is, emails don’t need to be purely about company updates.
Utilising the content on your website, like blog posts and pillar pieces of content is a great (and often a more effective) way of connecting with your customers.
Planning your emails in advance means you have a strategic approach to the information you share with your audience.
Utilise your existing content for email marketing
A written piece of content, whether it’s a core page on your website, a blog or larger piece of pillar content is what will help make or break your email marketing efforts.
That solid foundation of content can help steer your mailshots and provide key insights, advice and education on your services and brand, for your customers to digest.
Written content, especially blogs, can easily be repurposed into powerful marketing emails.
Here’s how one blog can be used for 5 email mailshots:
GDPR and its impact on email marketing
It’s been over seven years since GDPR came into effect, and while it hasn’t triggered the marketing apocalypse some predicted, it remains a critical consideration for any business running email campaigns.
GDPR is about building trust with your audience and protecting their personal data. For email marketing, that means being crystal clear about how you’re collecting, storing and using subscriber information. Consent needs to be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous. There also needs to be a clear and simple way for users to unsubscribe.
One of the most common GDPR violations, according to data from EU regulators, is the failure to have sufficient technical and organisational measures in place to ensure information security.
In the context of email marketing, this is hugely relevant. Businesses need systems that securely store customer data, protect it from breaches, and ensure only authorised users can access or manage that data.
At QBD, we help take the stress out of GDPR compliance for our clients by handling the technical side for you. From choosing secure email platforms to configuring proper data management and authentication protocols, we ensure your campaigns are not only effective, but also safe and compliant.
By investing in the right systems and working with partners who understand the rules inside and out, you can focus on doing what email does best: building strong, trusted relationships with your customers.
Why email marketing needs to be part of your ongoing marketing efforts
Regular ongoing touchpoints with your audience is the only way to maintain sales for your business. Without this connection with your customers, you’ll start to see sales drop and engagement with your brand plummet.
Ongoing marketing is crucial for success. Your audience needs consistent information on: Who you are, what you do and how you can help them.
Email marketing can help you maintain that regular pulse of communication effectively, with a direct line straight to your customers’ inbox.
If you’re not using email, yesterday is the time to start.
How QBD can get you started with email marketing
Email marketing enables you to maximise your sales campaigns, reach out to new leads and prospects, keep your existing customers engaged, showcase new products and update your subscribers with your latest news and updates.
It can help you build a relationship with your audience, driving more traffic to your website, landing page or social media.
From audience building, design and content to distribution and evaluation, we provide a full end-to-end email marketing solution that adds value and delivers results.
To find out how we can help get your email marketing pulse started, get in touch today.
About the authors
Rich Brown
Rich is our Head of Lead Generation.
Rich is responsible for helping people get the most from the digital marketing platforms they use to help them get more leads and sales and ultimately achieve their growth objectives.