64% of Companies Consider Email Marketing The Most Effective Marketing Channel

For years, there has been speculation about the demise of email as an effective marketing channel. After all, there are so many newer, shinier platforms to distract digital marketers: social media, pay-per-click (PPC), pop-ups and chatbots, to name a few.

All of these relative newcomers have their place, but the power of email marketing — yes, even in 2021 — shouldn’t be underestimated. According to Salesforce, email marketing earns a remarkable ROI: $38 for every dollar spent, or 3800 percent. and consider this: 64% of companies consider email marketing the most effective marketing channel. As a NADRA member, if you haven’t taken full advantage or any advantage of the advertising opportunities offered by NADRA, you’re missing out on a fantastic opportunity to reach your core audience.

Retention is instrumental to a business’ success. According to the Harvard Business Review, it can cost up to 25 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. Additionally, enticing your website visitors to receive your newsletters regularly builds your brand, keeps it top-of-mind and drives continuous traffic to your site.

Here are three essential elements of a successful newsletter strategy and how it can drive business for your company:

One aspect of email marketing that definitely is on life support is cold emailing. The General Data Privacy Rule (GDPR) and e-Privacy act (UK) — along with the advanced spam detection offered by email service providers (or ESPs) like Gmail and Outlook; have consigned unsolicited marketing emails to the recycle bin of history. For reputable online marketers and businesses, this is no bad thing. It just means working harder to create email newsletters that deliver true value to your subscribers (like the NADRA Bi-Weekly News Brief). The first step in building a subscriber base for your newsletter is to capture email addresses from both existing and potential customers. When a customer makes a purchase for the first time, make sure to request their opt-in to your newsletter and any other marketing emails. One element of newsletter design that has become crucial is that it be mobile-friendly. A 2018 study by Adestra found that 59% of email is now opened first on mobile devices. Despite the fact that most ESPs now make it easy to send responsive emails — formatted to automatically render correctly on any device — only 17%t of marketers always send responsive emails, according to Marketing Land. If marketers follow only one piece of newsletter design advice, make it this: employ responsive design.

If you consistently deliver high-quality, engaging content through your email newsletters, your subscribers will be more likely to open them and less likely to click “unsubscribe.” Whether you’re curating third-party content — for instance via a weekly or monthly roundup of news relevant to your target audience — or you’re delivering or promoting the unique content you have created on your company’s blog, make sure you deliver value consistently. Contrasting the average open rate — just over 20 percent for marketing emails across all industries for companies of all sizes, with the much higher open rates of newsletters created by NADRA provides a clear indication that high-quality, targeted content which resonates well with subscribers garners better results.

Speaking about open rates, your industry can have a big impact on average click through rates (CTR) and open rates. If you look at metrics across the board, you can get a good idea of how your emails should be performing. If you follow the three steps we laid out above, your open rates and CTR should be better than the average rates across the board. For example:

Conversely, NADRA’s last eight (8) emails to membership averaged:

Clearly, promoting your company, products, and services are seen way above the national average, which is a benefit for your business.

When used effectively, email newsletters can be one of the most effective digital marketing tools. Proactively acquiring subscribers, nailing the design, and delivering high-quality, engaging content are three essential steps for driving business and building your brand’s perception through an email newsletter.