Email marketing involves using emails to promote a company’s goods or services. The term also refers to using emails to develop relationships with customers, prospects, and consumers. A prospect is somebody a business believes could turn into a paying customer.
Email marketing is part of digital marketing, which we also refer to as online marketing or Internet marketing. Every email people send to a customer is a type of email marketing.
The messages typically contain advertising, promotional material, a request for donations, or an invitation to join a political group or other type of organization.
Put simply, email marketing refers to the use of email to send advertising messages.
Because most internet users have email accounts, this method can reach a big audience very quickly. In fact, a Pew Internet survey found that 96% of U.S. adults use the Internet, which makes email one of the fastest, cheapest, and easiest ways for marketers to connect with customers.
How effective is email marketing?
Since the advent of the Internet near the end of the last century, how we work, play, study, communicate, do business, shop, and watch our favorite movies and shows has changed significantly. Face-to-face communications have declined while contact through social media, texting, telephoning, and emailing has increased dramatically.
Marketing strategies have also undergone similar changes. Traditional approaches such as surface post mail shots, personal visits, radio and TV publicity campaigns have declined, while digital marketing, including effective marketing channels, has grown exponentially.
Let’s look at some of email marketing’s benefits:
Mass coverage
With this type of marketing approach, you can reach many thousands of customers or consumers in one go. Unlike traditional surface mail, there is no postage to pay. You can communicate with people locally, nationally, or globally.
Speed
Email marketing is an effective way of grabbing people’s attention at lightning speed.
Receivers already engaged
Receivers of these emails had some time in the past asked to receive them. When they purchased an item or joined an association, they ticked the box which asked whether they wanted to hear about new products, services, or developments.
Ideally, the people you write to should be those who don’t mind being approached, otherwise you may become known as a spammer.
Targeting
There are email lists for virtually every sector of the economy. If your target consumer is aged 40 to 55, earning more than a certain amount, and loves gardening, there are email lists that focus just on that socioeconomic age group.
With this type of marketing approach, you can communicate specifically with people who are most likely to become your customers.
Easy to do
All you need is an email list, good copy, and attractive images. Copy, in this context, refers to written promotional material.
Easy to gauge success
With email marketing, you can quickly find out what your conversion rates are, which type of message is the most effective, and which ones need to be improved.
Return on investment (ROI)
Email marketing continues to deliver exceptional return on investment (ROI) for businesses. Recent statistics show that for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return is around $36 – an impressive 3600% ROI.
So, it’s no surprise that roughly 14% of marketers cite email as the marketing strategy with the highest ROI. Better yet, email ROI is growing: 52% of email marketing professionals saw their campaign ROI double between 2022 and 2023.
Open rates
One of the biggest changes influencing ROI calculations lately is Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP).
According to the Email Benchmarking Report 2023, Apple’s MPP, implemented in late 2021, artificially inflates opens by automatically pre-loading email images (and tracking pixels). The average open rate jumped to 31.8% in 2022, up from 19% in 2021.
While this reflects MPP’s effect more than true engagement, email is nevertheless securing higher visibility in recipients’ inboxes.
Click-through rates (CTR)
Since open metrics have become less reliable, many marketers now emphasize click-through rates (CTR). In 2023, the overall average click-through rate was around 1.5%
Maximizing ROI
To sustain or increase ROI, marketers need a few critical tactics:
- Segmentation & Personalization – Tailor send frequency and messaging to user behavior and preferences.
- Automation – Use triggered campaigns (e.g., abandoned cart, re-engagement) to capitalize on moments of peak interest.
- Testing & Analytics – Focus on click-based engagement, conversions, and revenue attribution rather than inflated open rates.
- List Maintenance – Clean up inactive or bouncing addresses and focus on quality acquisition to preserve strong inbox placement.