Advantages and Disadvantages of Email Marketing

Email marketing is still one of the most effective online activities, despite changes in recent years. Given the changes in technology, it’s sometimes difficult to decide whether to choose email marketing or not. This article gives an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of email marketing and helps you make a decision. Most importantly, you will get insights into how to maintain a strong customer relationship using email marketing techniques.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing creates newsletters and emails to promote a business or present products and services. It can be done via email, fax, online banner, other platforms, and text messages to mobile phones.

Email marketing is a very effective sales technique that can help garner interest in your product or service. It’s been around for a long time, and whether you’re a large brick-and-mortar business or a fledgling startup, you can use email marketing to build brand awareness, drive sales, and ensure profitability.

Email marketing is a cost-effective way to connect with your customers and tell them about your latest products and services. It is one of the oldest forms of marketing, but it’s also one of the most effective.

That’s because email is not only a channel that consumers use regularly, but it also allows you to communicate directly with your customers in a way that doesn’t feel like traditional advertising.

According to the 2017 Email Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report, email marketing has an average ROI of $38 for every dollar spent.

Disadvantages of Email Marketing

1. Email marketing can be spammy

Email marketing is possible to be considered unwanted or spam by some people. So you may get complaints about your emails if your content is not interesting or relevant to the recipient. Spamming poses a threat to the brand image and website.

2. You only reach people who are already customers or people who have heard of you before

All the emails you share are automatically logged against your contact records. You may reach people who are already customers or people who have heard of you before.

You must ensure the mailing list is up to date and reaches new customers. Also, sending duplicate emails may damage the brand image.

3. It is Time Consuming

One of the primary disadvantages of email marketing is the time it takes to produce successful emails. Email marketing is time-consuming because it requires you to constantly write new content, design email templates, and monitor the performance of your campaigns. This can become a burden if you cannot adequately manage all these tasks on your own. Email marketing is a valuable tool that can help drive business growth if used correctly; however, ensuring it’s effective takes effort!

4. Poorly Designed Email Could Cost You

One problem is poor design. Poorly designed emails look messy, cluttered, and unprofessional – not what you want when trying to get people to open and read them! Additionally, bad grammar can be highly frustrating for recipients expecting high-quality content. Finally, a good sender reputation is among the most critical factors in achieving high deliverability rates. This means making sure that you have positive feedback from past recipients of your emails. Make sure to design well-designed emails using attractive fonts and graphics that will catch people’s attention.

5. Email Typos Could Make you Look Less Intelligent

Another common issue is typos – something that anyone who has ever sent an email knows all too well! Mistakes in spelling or syntax often lead receivers to believe that you don’t care about their experience or question your competence as a marketer. This isn’t good news for building trust and credibility with potential customers.

6. Sender’s Bias Could Affect the Outcome

Finally, sender bias may also prevent successful email campaigns from reaching their target audience. This happens when marketers favor their own opinions over those of other users (i.e., they write about topics that interest them rather than subjects that would interest others). As a result, these messages reach very few people because they’re not being forwarded along by friends or colleagues whom subscribers might think should know about it already.

7. The email list might shorten over time

People would regularly unsubscribe, and that is part of email marketing. However, one could have feedback from unsubscribing people and try to improve. This will not only reduce the unsubscription rate but also boost the overall performance of the campaign.

8. Spam laws

There are strict laws in most parts of the world due to spammers. Unfortunately, sometimes we break a few of these laws without fully being aware. Therefore, it is wise to be fully aware of the laws of the land where you operate. This way, you can stop yourself from breaking any rules unknowingly.

9. Laws for international customers

You need to be aware of international laws if you have an email list containing email ids for international customers. International regulations like GDPR have to be followed thoroughly. Follow these laws to avoid getting banned or fined heavily in a specific country.

Advantages of Email Marketing

1. The investment cost is low

With email, you can send an unlimited number of messages at an extremely low cost per message. This makes it easy for small businesses on a limited budget to use this strategy effectively, while larger companies can send more targeted messages at a higher cost per message.

2. An eye-catching email will do half your work

Beautifully-designed newsletters with great content will ensure your audience will enjoy opening your emails and maybe even look forward to receiving them!

It maximizes the effectiveness of your email marketing. Not only that, but it helps ensure all of your information is laid out in a way that’s easy for readers to understand and remember.

3. Email marketing is permission-based

Email marketing is permission-based. If someone joins your mailing list, they want to receive messages from you. Your messages don’t interrupt or get in their way — they choose to read them.

4. You can segment your lists to improve targeting and personalization

You can segment your lists to improve targeting and personalization. For example, if you have multiple products or services, you can send different emails based on which product/service each person signed up for or purchased from in the past.

5. It’s easy to see whether your email marketing works.

You can track the success of each campaign by recording how many times each person opens each email, as well as how many clicks they make on links within the message. These statistics will tell you if people are reading your emails, which allows you to adjust future campaigns accordingly.

• Best practices for effective email marketing include:
  To begin with, make sure that your emails are personalized and relevant; don’t just send the same message repeatedly!
• Make sure that all of the information in your emails is accurate; if someone clicks on an image or link within one of your messages and finds.

6. It is a better way of marketing compared to Social Media Marketing

Email marketing is also more affordable than other tactics like social media advertising because you don’t need a big budget to start. The investment cost is low compared to pay-per-click advertising or other forms of digital advertising.

Plus, you don’t have to worry about competition among brands in the same vertical as you when buying ads on Google AdWords or Facebook Ads. You can target specific audiences by sending them messages that speak directly to their needs, wants, and interests — even if those messages differ.

7. Email is better than postal mail

Nothing is printed for the emails. Email is better than postal mail as it saves a lot of paper. Emails save the environment from deforestation; by using them, we are doing something noble for the future generation. Above all, a lot of money is saved as email doesn’t require stamps, like postal mail.

Conclusion

Email marketing aims to maintain a strong customer relationship. One could achieve it by strategically using these email marketing techniques with advantages and disadvantages. It offers a low-cost strategy that is measurable and can be automated.

Email marketing is a critical strategy in any digital marketing plan. If you want to implement such a strategy to grow your business, Digital catalyst will help you achieve your goal. Do check out our Email marketing services.

Digital Catalyst is one of the leading digital marketing companies in Hyderabad, India. We implement effective marketing strategies to build trust, loyalty, and brand awareness among your customers and help you develop your business.