The very fact that it feels like email has been around since the beginning of the internet, may make you think it’s now primitive and irrelevant way of marketing. This thought is further reinforced when you consider the feats being achieved by newer marketing strategies such as advertising on social media, online price-comparing platforms like Shopping.fm and online stores on popular websites such as eBay and Amazon. Nothing could be further from the truth than this! Email marketing remains a giant force to reckon with and has the numbers for the best marketing tool for businesses amongst marketing channels.
For example, compared to other digital marketing channels, studies show that email is rated highest amongst marketers with 53.6%, followed by social media marketing (50.9%) and search engine optimization (45%). More numbers will be provided shortly.

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing where businesses send promotional messages via electronic mail to prospects and customers. To comprehend the impact of email marketing, consider this.
On a daily basis, 4.3 billion email accounts send almost 200 billion emails, with well over half of these being business emails. By the way, over 3.7 billion people use email. That’s more than half the current world’s population. In the US alone, 92% of consumers use email, and 61% of these email users check and send emails on a daily basis. Getting the picture, yeah?

So, here are three reasons why email marketing is important to your business:

It is preferred by consumers and is more effective than social media
When consumers want to communicate with companies or have companies communicate with them, their preferred option is neither social media, text messages nor direct mail. It’s email. A staggering 77% of consumers prefer email for marketing communications. They would rather have their promotions, regular updates, and information delivered via email. Only 17% prefer social media for these purposes. In the US, 85% of retailers consider email marketing one of the most effective customer acquisition tactics.
In terms of engagement, 44% of the consumers that receive targeted emails actually proceed to buy at least one item due to the promotional message. In addition, email marketing has three times more conversion rates than social media marketing. Effective!
Fun fact: You are more than five times more likely to get a click through from an email campaign than from a tweet.

Email marketing syncs with mobile tech
The number of consumers using mobile devices continue to grow daily, and email marketing is a perfect fit for mobile devices. You will understand the interesting relationship that exists between email marketing and mobile devices when you consider these numbers.
The 55% of emails are opened on a mobile device; 91% of internet users check email at least once a day on smartphones; 71% mobile purchasing decisions are most influenced by emails from companies. You see that with more than two thirds of emails being read on smartphones or tablets, email marketing is an effective way for businesses to reach and engage consumers that are using mobile devices.

Email marketing is cost effective and economical
Marketing via email is not only easy, but inexpensive and effective. Email marketing offers the opportunity for business owners to reach a wide audience at almost no cost per message. When compared to other marketing channels such as direct mail, TV, or radio, it’s much more budget friendly.
Also, you don’t lose out on the marketing addons, imagery, and benefits when you use email marketing. In fact, you can get instant feedback from the consumers at the click of a button via the email.

Email marketing offers you many more benefits such as instant analytics for improved performance, automation, content personalization, amongst others.
You even get to be eco-friendly by saving papers and trees.