Email Marketing

Definition:

Email Marketing is a communication channel and a form of direct marketing. Brands and organizations use Email Marketing to promote their products and services, build lasting customer relationships, and incite their audiences to transact.

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Email Marketing Critical Capabilities:

You may say that Email Marketing is a thing of the past, but this channel is still one of the most effective in the industry. According to ReportLinker's Global Email Marketing Industry Report, the global market for Email Marketing is healthy and projected to reach $17.9 Billion by 2027, growing at a rate of 13.3% over the period 2020-2027. Additionally, the DMA says that, for every $1 spent on email, this channel delivers an average ROI of $32. Email Marketing is still alive and kicking.

We also must admit that the way we do Email Marketing today differs from what we used to do decades ago. In today's world, personalization, automation, omnichannel journeys, and AI are adding layers of complexity that take email efforts from nice-to-haves to critical components in the success of Brands' marketing strategies.

When deciding to select an Email Marketing solution, I suggest you look for the following five critical capabilities:

1. Campaign Management: Long gone are the days when Brands would only focus on doing massive email blasts. With customer expectations so high, the rise of privacy and security concerns, and an ever-changing Martech landscape, email needs to be part of a holistic engagement approach that often includes other channels. First, I recommend you select a solution with an excellent track record in email sending, monitoring, and reputation management capabilities. Second, I recommend you look for a solution that provides core features of brand-led communications (Campaign Management) and complement them with consumer-led engagement capabilities (Journey Orchestration). Lastly, I recommend you look for a solution that includes other channels such as the ability to manage and send mobile texts, push, in-app, web, chat, and offline channels such as direct mail and call-center.
2. Content: The story you tell can make or break your Email Marketing efforts. For this capability, I suggest you look for a solution with content management features that connect and align your teams with your content strategy. Also, look for dynamic content and offer management capabilities as they will help you personalize your messages and stay consistent across channels beyond email.
3. Data: There's no solid engagement strategy if we don't know who customers are, and Data plays a strategic role in achieving it. Decades ago, we would have looked for Data Management capabilities to help capture email addresses, perform segmentation jobs, cut files out, and send email communication to our audiences. Today, Data Management needs to go beyond Email Marketing and should be part of a much bigger customer-obsessed strategy, often sitting in the middle of all systems. No wonder most innovative Email Marketing solutions are now built on top of CDP systems or at least offer easy integrations with existing ones. I recommend you look for rich Data Management capabilities provided by these systems to take advantage of a privacy-centric and real-time customer profile that will help your segmentation efforts and boost the relevancy of your Email Marketing strategy.
4. ‍AI: Most organizations heavily invest in AI and Machine Learning techniques to scale their business. Regarding boosting your Email Marketing efforts, I recommend you look for solutions with AI-powered segmentation, content and offer recommendations, send-time optimization, and next-best-action and journeys prioritization.‍
5. Reporting & Analytics: Email Marketing is effective only when we can prove its contribution to the business. As you look for your Email Marketing solution, I recommend you pay close attention to the depth of your reports and dashboards. Ideally, these reports will include out-of-the-box Email metrics, your emails' role in the overall customer experience, and their contribution to the bottom line, including conversions or transactions. Additionally, you may be interested in looking for advanced Analytics to understand how Email Marketing helps your customers get what they need and to optimize your media mix and budget to maximize your business objectives. 

Online resources to learn even more about Email Marketing:

• Email Marketing 101: Direct-To-Consumer (D2C) Edition
• Forrester's Email Marketing Review, 2022‍
• Email Marketing Resource from eMarketer
• Forrester's Wave for Email Marketing Service Providers, Q1 2022
  

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