End Of The Debate: Is Email Marketing Dead?

Email is dead.

You’ve probably heard that a thousand times by now. But in fact, the opposite is true: Email is killing it. Email is king.

Skeptical?

Just ask yourself one question.

If you were to sell a book, who would you sell it to — a group of people who have never heard of you or people who already know you and like you?

Which would cost more time and effort?

Exactly, selling to people that don’t know you takes much more work…

After all, it’s no wonder one of the best marketers in history (Gary Halbert) said this:

“The best list of customers is your own list of customers. Your own customers should respond far better than any other list you can get. Of course, there is one caveat. They must be satisfied customers!”

While we don’t agree with a lot Halbert did, he’s 100% on point here.

6 out of 10 marketers consider email marketing their most effective marketing channel — it is and remains the most cost-effective, scalable, and highest converting channel out of them all — with a huge ROI compared to other channels.

It’s also the most complicated. With a bit of effort, everyone can run ads, create content or engage their customers a bit on Social Media — not that we want to downplay other kinds of marketing, they’re all very important.

But it’s very hard to royally screw it up. With Email, screwing up is easy, especially with the complexity Email Marketing Software like Klaviyo can bring to the table.

Klaviyo is awesome, but if you don’t know what you’re doing… your Email Automations can quickly turn into an ugly case of “digital spaghetti” — a huge blob of Email Sequences that nobody actually understands anymore.

And I can virtually guarantee you there’s some funky stuff happening in your Email Marketing Setup that you’re not even aware of. Because that’s what we consistently find when working with brands who’ve been doing it all by themselves.

But done right? Email works.

• Email Marketing produces $38–41 per each $1 spent, which is a fantastic 3,800% ROI.
• 85% of U.S. retailers consider email marketing their most effective customer acquisition & retention tactic.
• Individuals who buy through email marketing spend 138% more.
• 77% of people prefer to get permission-based promotional messages via email (versus direct mail, text, phone, or social media).
• Email subscribers are 3x more likely to share content on social media than leads who came through another channel, according to QuickSprout.
• 73% of millennials identify email as their preferred means of business communication.
• Checking email is a complementary activity. People do it while watching TV (69 percent), in bed (57 percent), and on vacation (79 percent).

But wait, there’s more.

Email marketing also allows you to exponentially increase your customer lifetime value. Let me explain.

If you promote offers to your email list, you get to know your audience at a deeper level — in other words, you learn over time what your subscribers resonate with… and what’s likely to make them press the “Purchase” Button.

And that’s data you can use to skyrocket your customer lifetime value. So not only does Email Marketing help you retain your customers and sell them more products but also “predict” what they will buy in the future.

And not only that — Email can transform your customer experience, making you someone they will remember buying from for years to come. If you stay on their mind, who do you think they will order from in the future?

Check out our article “How To Turn Customers Into Raving Fans With Post-Purchase Perks” for more on that topic — you can find it here.

Now, let’s go over the ROI of email marketing in general.

Let’s say your store makes $50,000 per month, with 0% of that coming from your Email Marketing Channel…

That’s great — well done. But you could be doing a lot better (and it’s not super hard to get there).

Why?

Because email can generate upwards of 30% of your total revenue (our clients & partners typically see between 30–50%).

In other words, you’d add an extra $15,000 per month to the $50,000 you are currently making, with very little in additional marketing expenses.

Now let’s suppose you don’t reinvest that money…

And decide to stay at the same revenue…

15k x 12… that’s an extra 180k revenue per year — with no Ad Spend or similar expenses eating into your profit. This means profit margins on this revenue go way up.

…which now means you have a ton of extra cash to invest into growing your business beyond the $65,000 you’re now doing per month. The path to $100,000/month and beyond is open and waiting for you!

If you’d like to get a very rough idea on the ROI you can expect for your business, you can find a simple calculator here.

Now, compare those stats with what you get from social media advertising…

Which has an average ROI of 200%. This means you’re spending 50 cents to make a dollar in revenue. At scale, even the best experts struggle to go far beyond a 4x ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).

So ultimately, there can’t really be much profit margin left after fulfillment & cost of goods sold.

Email, on the other hand, produces $38–41 per each $1 spent, which is a fantastic 3,800% ROI.

That’s not to look down on Ads or any other Marketing Channel — they are all important. But only when you combine all of your front-end (traffic generating) and back-end (customer retention, upselling) together… Now you have something truly powerful.

When both sides support each other & mutually accelerate their results, it’s beautiful to see. It’s a shame that a lot of Email Marketing Agencies completely ignore this and only toot their own back-end horn — there’s so much more to be gained.

More on that here where we explore some of the ways Ads & Email can work together.

And talking about sales. Let me tell you something else…

Email Marketing Also Skyrockets Conversions

Even though Email Marketing helps increase revenue with existing customers, another huge benefit is the fact that it nurtures leads and moves them closer to making a purchase…

Let me explain.

Many times a prospect will visit your website a few times but not make any purchase and there might be plenty of reasons for that — but often, what’s missing is they need to know more about you to purchase from you, or need that final nudge to get them to buy…

And that is where Email Marketing comes into play.

With Email Marketing, you can ask customers to take one more step that brings them closer to you (and ultimately, buying) — but that step is not as difficult for them as clicking the Buy Button. Now you have time — do it right and you’ll stay top of mind until they’re ready to purchase.

So, as you can see, an email list might well be the most valuable asset you can have as a business owner — especially in the eCommerce space. The capacity email marketing has to drive sales without spending much on marketing is unparalleled.

In fact, it has been proven that getting a new customer can cost 5 times more than retaining an existing customer. And increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95% and higher.

The choice is yours.