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Email marketing has stood the test of time. With each year, new threats and opportunities appear that marketers need to know about. Being in touch with these threats and opportunities can help optimize the results of their email marketing tactics. Here are some email threats and opportunities to consider that may impact your business.
Email Threats
Let’s start with the issues you’ll need to address when leveraging this marketing tactic. The main threat involves cybersecurity where more emails addresses are getting hacked through phishing schemes as well as ransomware embedded in email attachments.
By receiving newsletters and other promotional information in burner emails, consumers can secure their personal information that is often included in emails. There are other ways to keep email safe. One practical solution is to work with a company that provides cloud email security, such as Vircom, Barracuda, and FireEye.
Additionally, it’s important to ensure operating systems and application patches are current. Regularly undertake cybersecurity training with employees and share security tips with your customers. This training, including phishing scam simulation software, can help to identify a phishing email and questionable email attachments. Also, hover over URLs in the email to identify whether it is a real address.
Email Opportunities
The good news is that there are opportunities than threats when it comes to email. First, let’s look at how often email is used. The Radicati Group collected some incredible email insights. They found that, in 2017, “the total number of business and consumer emails sent and received per day will reach 269 billion, and is expected to continue to grow at an average annual rate of 4.4% over the next four years, reaching 319.6 billion by the end of 2021.”
Also, for 2017, there were approximately 3.7 billion global email users. This means that about half of the global population now uses email. By the end of 2021, the research firm predicts that the number of worldwide email users will be more than 4.1 billion.
Besides the number of people you can still reach through email marketing campaigns, even better is the fact is that it delivers a significant return for this marketing effort. A June 2016 Direct Marketing Association(DMA) and Demand Metric survey concluded that email had a median ROI of 122%.
This was more than four times higher than the ROI for social media, paid search, and direct mail. Also, Econsultancy found that marketing agency professionals and company marketers believed in email’s effectiveness. Revenue from email campaigns has also been increasing, according to a Relevancy Group survey.
Maximizing Email Opportunities
And, to keep achieving this return, you have to focus your email marketing campaigns on delivering the greatest value for your market segments. According to Ken Conklin CEO of branding firm Gravel To Castle, “The relationship that you have with your list is your most valuable asset in your business in 2018’s digital landscape. The way that you increase the value of your list is through delivering insane amounts of value to them on a consistent basis.”
Conklin says brands’s goal should be to get subscribers to think:
- “Wow, I can’t believe how much value this person has been bringing me for free!’
- “They respect my time, for they send out very short pieces of content, and every time I receive a new content piece, I end up growing and solving a particular problem right then and there.”
- “If their free value is this great, imagine how much value I would get if I actually became a paying client!”
Part of the value creation with email includes using automated emails. The Litmus’ State of Email Survey found that successful email programs are 108.5% more likely to generate at least half of the company’s email marketing revenue from automated and transactional emails.
Also, leveraging machine learning will also help companies find a more effective way to personalize email correspondence and email newsletters for their targeted lists. Using these mechanisms, marketers will reach a massive email audience in a personalized way. Although there is much more work to do with this, the opportunity is there and starting to take hold.
The Future of Email Today
To address email threats and opportunities, our email boxes are undergoing a transformation. Overall, the trend is toward a more visual inbox. This provides access to information quickly when email recipients can receive hundreds of emails a day. Plus, it addresses the security threat.
A more visual email box includes a preview of links and attachments to ensure they are safe and valid. Email newsletters will feature more photos and videos. This approach means marketers can immediately deliver the content that adds the most value. And, even signature lines will have contact pictures and more personalized information to make email more engaging.
At this rate, email is not going the way of other communication channels. Instead, email is becoming more relevant. Therefore, it is important to make email tactics a significant part of your multichannel marketing strategy.
This article originally appeared on Forbes.
