In terms of the scope of communication that it permits, email is still the leading marketing technology for reaching people from around the globe. While social media has billions of accounts, it is favored by younger generations. Email, on the other hand, is truly a universal technology that over 4.26 billion people worldwide use on a regular basis.
Email is also never limited to specific spheres. For example, around 28% of people will have at least four email accounts, some pertaining to work while others are for personal communication. For marketing teams, the ability to deliver a message directly to the inbox of a potential customer is a vital communication pathway.
Over time, as email has continued to grow, more supporting technologies have begun to arise to streamline communication. Everything from in-email templates and email signatures to grammar-checking tools has originated out of connection to the dominance of email.
In this article, we’ll dive into this marketing tool, exploring exactly why it is so powerful for modern businesses and how supporting technologies have helped streamline this surge. Let’s dive right in.
Why Is Email So Effective for Marketing Teams?
Email has been around since 1971, having now had over five decades to develop, change, and improve. Over this time, it has evolved from a relatively unknown technology – even once being called a less impressive version of a fax machine – into a worldwide connective phenomenon. You cannot navigate the internet, create accounts, or interact with services without an email.
Simply put, email is integral to the modern operation of the world. With this dominance comes an opportunity, one that marketing teams have been making use of for nearly as long as email has been around.
There are a number of reasons that email is such an effective platform for marketing teams to use:
Permanent record
Unless a user actively chooses to delete an email from their account, every email they receive will become a permanent addition to their inbox. Businesses are able to use this permanence to build up an ongoing stream of communication with each user. Whenever a user wants to find out any information that a marketing team has sent them, they need to only perform a short search in their inbox.
Having a huge record of past marketing emails, information, and updates will help marketing teams show that their business is authentic. Businesses can create a record of contact within the inboxes of their customers, boosting brand awareness and authority while delivering tailored marketing messages.
Direct correspondence
When posting on social media, marketing teams are broadcasting into the void. They only hope that users will slow down enough during their scrolling to read and interact with the post. Emails are different in this sense because they offer marketing teams the opportunity to share information directly to someone’s personal inbox.
Instead of just broadcasting and hoping someone reads the post, an email is a direct form of communication. With this level of directness also comes the ability to deeply personalize the email content that teams are sending. Personalized content is one of the most effective ways of boosting engagement with marketing materials.
Within emails, you are able to include a much higher degree of personalization, ensuring that customers feel more seen when interacting with your marketing materials. Direct correspondence and its ability to facilitate personalization make email marketing highly effective.
Direct Integration with Analytical Technologies
Email technology has a major advantage over traditional forms of marketing as it includes the ability to embed analytical technologies. With traditional print marketing, businesses are unable to measure interaction and the impact of any campaigns that they publish. Or, if they do have a sense of the success or failure of a campaign, it isn’t nearly as precise as what email can offer.
Email marketing allows businesses to track the exact level of engagement and interaction with their posts. By monitoring the open or click-through rates on certain email campaigns, businesses can continuously streamline their marketing content and work towards a more engaging form of marketing for all.
How Have Supporting Technologies Furthered the Success of Email?
By default, email is a fairly unremarkable piece of technology. At its most basic level, it simply provides a direct connection between accounts for the movement of text, images, and files. While this is phenomenally useful, the true potential of email lies in what people can do with it.
As we suggested above, email is useful as it allows people to move information from A to B. This direct pathway for communication is useful for marketing teams as they can instantly share product information, customer support, or other business-related intelligence. Yet, in each of these scenarios, the contents of the email are always the most important aspect.
Supporting technologies have allowed businesses to add more information to their emails, boosting their overall utility. A great example of this is the usage of email signatures. Email signatures allow businesses to include:
- Personal information like names and job titles
- Job and company information
- Outbound links to websites or other content
- Additional marketing materials
- And much more
The ability to include additional information helps to boost the utility of emails while also affording marketing emails a sense of professionalism and authority. Additionally, considering employees only need to follow a short tutorial on how to generate an email signature to start using this technology, it is a highly effective and efficient way of improving email communication.
While simple, an addition like an email signature can make a huge difference to the overall impact of an email. With these supplementary technologies, we can develop the power of email marketing communication without being overbearing.
Final Thoughts
Even after years of competitors in the form of instant messaging platforms and social media, email still reigns as the top strategy for marketing teams looking to boost sales and engagement. While email is an effective tool on its own, the additional functions that technologies that email signatures offer help to bring out the very best of email.
By streamlining the writing, sending, and information that emails can hold, email signatures are a phenomenal example of one simple technology that has had a huge impact. As email continues to form a core part of the marketing team strategy book, more supplementary technologies will help to draw more utility from this communication service.
Email is by no means a new technology, but its steadfast presence and dominance over similar communication streams show that it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.