1. Introduction

Over the past two decades, a lot has changed. The technology has advanced so far, that it has opened up completely new horizons. In terms of business, this means more opportunities and more ways to reach consumers. 

Online marketing is now a part of our reality, always included in the business plan, as a medium of improving business and realizing goals. Its potential has been proven so many times, that it is slowly taking over, leaving traditional marketing techniques far behind. It is estimated that almost 40% of the world’s population use the internet, and with this in mind, it is natural to think of the internet as a great place for advertising your business.

Online marketing includes several types of marketing, and some of those are the following:

• Search engine marketing
• Social media marketing
• Content marketing
• Affiliate marketing
• Email marketing

The main distinction between these types is the medium used to reach customers. Additionally, each type requires a set of strategies to be successfully implemented in a business plan. Best practices and guidelines are also something to have in mind when planning a strategy.

Out of all the types of online marketing, email marketing delivers the highest ROI for marketers, which is why it is so widely used.

Image: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/email-marketing-new-rules/

About email marketing

You should consider email marketing as a modern way of communicating with consumers. Emails, as a form of communication, have been around for decades, ever since the first sent email message back in 1971. Over the years, the World Wide Web has evolved and grown, and email marketing has found its rightful place in the business world. Although email messages were once a popular way of communicating with friends, online messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Viber, etc. have taken over this role. Despite this fact, emails are still important and a large percent of people do check their email inbox daily.

This gives a high potential to reach online consumers. Email marketing should be a personalized approach, where your goal is to directly communicate with the online users in order to achieve something, such as generate a sale, get visitors, encourage downloads, etc. Even though an email marketing campaign is, in essence, a promotional campaign, you should go beyond this concept and use a more subtle approach to both reach and engage online users.

The goal of email marketing is to get the message to the consumer, but it is not enough to simply send a message. You need to encourage open rates and you need to explore how the consumers are interacting with your email, whether they forward it, click on the links, etc.

In this ebook, you will learn the basics of email marketing, optimization of an email campaign, how to grow your mailing list and implement email marketing in your business, all for the purpose of improving your business through this online marketing technique.

Email marketing statistics

To understand the importance and the role email marketing has nowadays, let us review some of the most relevant email marketing statistics:

• A single person is sending and receiving over 200 emails a day on average. (Radicati)
• In 2015, the number of worldwide email users was nearly 2.6 billion. By the end of 2019, the number of worldwide email users will increase to over 2.9 billion. (Radicati)
• The total number of worldwide email accounts is expected to increase to over 4.3 billion accounts by year-end 2016. (Radicati)
• 35% of email recipients open email based on the subject line alone. (Convince&Convert)
• The mobile market share is around 55% (Litmus, 2016). Additionally, 75% of Gmail users open their emails on mobile devices. (Techcrunch, 2015)
• 30% of subscribers change email addresses annually. (Convince&Convert)
• 44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email. (Convince&Convert)
• Email marketing technology is used by 82% of B2B and B2C companies.(Ascend2)
• 74% of marketers say targeted personalization increases customer engagement. (eConsultancy)
• Segmented and targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue. (DMA)
• Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter. (Campaign Monitor)
• For every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38 in ROI.(Campaign Monitor)
• 83% of B2B marketers use email newsletters for content marketing. (Content Marketing Institute)

These statistics should support a couple of things:

• Email marketing is one of the most used types of online marketing
• Email marketing has the greatest ROI
• Personalization and segmentation are important for reaching success in email marketing
• Mobile share in email marketing is on the rise

Tools and analytics are two additional aspects you will need to implement into email marketing strategy to complete the approach. Having this in mind, you can now understand how email marketing can help your online business, how it can help you take your business to the next level.