Advantages and Disadvantages of Email Marketing

According to a report in 2022 there were 4.26 billion users of email across the world which now have increased to 4.48 billion of the total 8.8 billion world’s population in 2024.

3.3 million emails are sent every second from 7.9 billion email accounts across the world. ( Statista Report on Email Users)

These stats make email marketing an effective tool in digital marketing. In this modern world where communication is considered as a key factor, email marketing offers effective and budget friendly ways for businesses, brands and services to connect with their audience. But sometimes it behaves very bad if not executed in right direction, let dive in and find out advantages and disadvantages of email marketing in the real world.

The return on investment ROI in email marketing is 3600% which can be increased to 4200% and this is the highest sales generating digital marketing techniques after Social Media Marketing. 

As nothing comes at ease so there are also some disadvantages of email marketing which can be very challenging in ruining an email marketing campaign.

Let’s come to the topic and covers how Email Marketing is useful for business, brands and service providers and what are it’s key drawbacks

Key Advantages of Email Marketing 

There are enormous advantages of email marketing which makes it an effective digital marketing tool that can level up your marketing efforts in days.

Here are the key benefits of email marketing:

1. Budget Friendly Digital Marketing Techniques:
2. Direct Access To Targeted Audience
3. Personalized Engagement
4. Measurable Results
5. Automation Opportunity

Budget Friendly Digital Marketing Techniques:

One of the most interesting benefits of email marketing is it is budget friendly as compared to other digital marketing techniques. It demands for almost no investment like other digital marketing channels such seo, sem and social media.

Here is how it can be cost effective for;

• Businesses: The main purpose of online business is increasing sales and generating leads in the local areas. Email marketing offers a wide range of advantages for businesses of all levels, small or large entrepreneurs to focus on sales in their own region all at a very low cost.
• Brands: All the brand owners want to make brand awareness among all the people in their zone. For gaining purposes they spend in millions on different digital channels. They can get benefits from email marketing to spread their messages directly in a person’s inbox all at a very less price.
• Services: Email Marketing is a very effective tool for online service providers because it gives chances to connect directly with the client without a third party. The only investment they will face in email marketing is buying tools for automation and templates etc.

Read out the benefits and ways of choosing best sign offs for emails.

Direct Access To Targeted Audience

Every person in the world uses mobile phones and there are many functions in the mobiles which demands to have a personal email account. A person makes an account for getting benefits from the features of mobile phones and he also use the same email if he purchases something online. This is an example of how email marketing gives direct access to targeted audience.

It’s widespread direct audience access benefits to businesses, brands and service providers are;

• For Business: Business owners always look to target a customer which can become a repeated buyer and that is only possible when they have direct access to the person contact without third parties. Email marketing gives this important benefit to the businesses.
• For Brands: Email marketing increases brand awareness by giving benefits of direct inbox access to the owners. Brand awareness is very important in launching a new brand in the market.
• For Services: Platforms like Fiverr, Upwork and Freelancer provide a space where a service can be provided to the client all across the world but these platforms charge a huge amount to both buyer and seller. One of the best ways to access a client directly is email marketing without giving a lot to the platform.

Personalized Engagement 

Email marketing is considered as the most personalized way of marketing. Because On average 1 out of 4 users clicks on the marketing email which is far better than spending on PPC modules which charge for each click. The opening of a message means that the customer is not only viewing the emails but he is also engaging with the received content.

Here is how personalized benefits gives useful engagements in different fields:

• Businesses: Email marketing gives professional look to the businesses in the inbox of a customer which increases the conversion rates at large scale.
• Brands: If a brand wants to communicate directly with its audience in a very effective and professional way then it can choose email marketing over any platforms because there are a lot of marketing tools which give attractive templates for making a brand look exactly according to the customer’s desire.
• Services: Email Marketing provides direct access to the client’s inbox and if it is done correctly then it can be a very professional way to outreach a client rather than bombarded with ads on social media or google.

Measurable Results

All the results from email marketing campaigns like insights, delivery rate, opened rates, clicks on links in the content and conversion rates are easily measurable with the help of email marketing tools.

How different niches can take this benefit:

• Businesses: The most important part of running a business is to get useful measures from campaigns so that future planning should be made according to the data. Email marketing is a perfect method which offers results which are highly measurable and actionable.
• Brands: When you know about how your brand is performing in the market then you can take quality measures, update or change the future campaigns. Email marketing allows a brand owner to know about whether it is performing well or not.
• Services: Different email marketing tools provide data which is highly accurate and actionable. Through this data service provider can change or update their marketing campaigns according to their clients’ desires, demands and needs.

Automation Opportunity

One of the top benefits of email marketing is automations where you can set a schedule for sending emails and then follow up emails by just one click.

This process has made life easier for the business, brands and service providers.

• Businesses: Through email marketing business owners can set a schedule in which they can make a weekly campaign for sending emails to contacts. In this way businesses can get information of demands, needs and desires of customers and make their products accordingly.
• Brand: Successful branding through email marketing is to keep sending marketing emails to the audience regularly, because it is said that it sells what is seen first. There must be a process to send daily emails to potential customers because when you remain at the top of the inbox then it increases awareness among the people.
• Services: Services providers have a lot of queries in the form of handling current clients and making sure that their strategy works in the favor of clients. In these conditions finding new clients through email marketing is quite difficult for them and at this they can set an automation schedule for sending emails.

Real Success Stories from Email Campaigns

Almost all the famous brands, large entrepreneur, service providers, affiliate marketers and educational institutes use email marketing in order to keep awareness among their audience.

Here are the real life examples from email marketing that shows practical approaches of email marketing advantages.

Case Study of a Charity Organization: Cost Effectiveness of Email Marketing

A Philanthropic foundation The Great Orchestra Of Christmas Charity decided to launch a festival. They asked the people they can join the festival and for this purpose they made a landing page where people interested in joining the festival can sign up. Through email marketing they saved time and money which would be spent on door to door engagement.

Later on they conducted a survey email marketing campaign which showed that most of the people were interested in face to face meetups, in 2021 this festival was made a ticket event. Now if they don’t have opportunities of email marketing then they would be giving tickets and other instructions to each and every person from door to door. They make use of email marketing techniques for personalized email marketing approaches for custom communication with the audience.

Their sign ups increased at the rate of 41.74% and they captured 51488 sign ups with stunning email marketing campaigns.

Case Study of an E-commerce store: Increased Sales by Email Marketing

LandCafe.pl is an online e-commerce store for travel and coffee lovers. They were willing to increase their brand awareness and want to speed the purchase process. They know that most of their audience is educated and running an educational campaign can make their subscribers more aware and ready to buy.

They started with a welcome series of emails based on the “know, like, trust” principle. This helps their audience to better understand the brand and product so that they can buy the coffee they like the best. 

Their success in targeting directly through email marketing shown by these stats;

i. 41.30% rate of sales in welcome series

ii. 13.30% increased sales by discount coupon email series

iii. 54% total sales rate

Case Study of a Mobile Accessory Retailer: Perosnalized Engagement with Audience Through Email Marketing

MobileFun is an online mobile accessories retailer company based in Birmingham, the company retails through offices and dedicated websites worldwide.

They had a lot of emails in their pocket but these were not segmented according to interests, demands, needs and location. They could send the same emails to all the subscribers which is an unprofessional method, instead they segmented the contact lists and sent targeted newsletters, ran multiple tests and used the automation feature of email marketing tools. They boost 49.17% open rates of their campaigns after a personalized email marketing approach.

Case Study of LesFrenchies: Turning Social Media Followers to Engaging Community Via Email Marketing

Les Frenchies Travel shares tips for traveling and exploring France with a handy emphasis on Paris. It is owned by a Husband and Wife who are famous for advancing on the best tourist attractions in France.

They had a lot of followers on their social media platforms but due to algorithm limitations they can’t deliver their content to all their audience. They can hardly reach 3-5% of their total audience. Then they integrated the email marketing techniques on their website and Shopify store in which they offer free guides for making an email list for future engagement. With the time they get a lot of contacts in their list, they send a regular newsletter to keep their followers informed about their latest social media content.

This approach resulted in the reach of 50% audience and also a strong 4% CTR which increased the engagement level of their audience with their email content.

Case Study of a Furniture Company: 2x conversion rates from abandoned cart emails series

SELSEY is a leading furniture and home decorating retailer company in Poland. The main purpose of the company is to provide a space where people can relax which is crucial for daily life activities.

They had a lot of pending orders in their cart and they were willing to encourage the audience to complete their purchases by maintaining a strong relationship with their audience. They use the abandonment cart automation techniques in which they include review proofs in the emails.

These email marketing techniques almost doubled their marketing efforts in which the visitors turned into potential customers thereby increasing the conversion rate.

Key Disadvantages of Email Marketing 

Every online marketing technique has drawbacks in which marketers have been seen struggling a lot in the form of not reaching their targeted audience or not converting customers into buyers. There are also some disadvantages of email marketing in which a single mistake can lead to the permanent block from a prospect.

Here are the key disadvantages of email marketing:

1. Risk of Spam
2. Deliverability Issues
3. High Volume of Emails
4. Less Reach As Compared to Social Media Marketing
5. Finding Talents

Risk of Spam

The biggest drawback of email marketing is sending emails into the spam folder in which you will see as your email has been sent but it will lead to the spam instead of inbox. If you are not obeying the email marketing laws and sending bulk emails one after another then this platform can permanently send your emails to spam where you email will remain as a widow woman in the house. Usually no one pays attention to spam folders because people have a limited time to check their inbox.

Solution

The first solution for protecting our emails from spam is sending emails at a specific time and there must be one, two or three days gap in sending the follow up emails rather than bombarding emails one after another. Increase Clicks and open rate. Use quality content so that you get a reply to the first email. Provide a clear solution to problems and call to action at the end.

Deliverability Issues

After getting rid of spam you can face deliverability issues in which emails are not delivered to the client inbox due to multiple reasons. In some cases the owner of the email block receiving all marketing emails or from specific regions. Hard and soft bounces of emails can lead to email deliverability issues.

Solution

Some of the deliverability issues are fine but when you find more and more deliverability issues in your campaigns then clean your list, improve the content quality, use less clickable links in the content and check the results from email marketing campaigns regularly.

High Volume of Emails

Each and every person who uses email for online purchases or to log in to online websites must have a huge number of emails in their inboxes which makes them less interested in checking inboxes regularly. This is not a big disadvantage because when you craft eye-catching subjects and make content attractive then it makes the users feel safe and beneficial to open and check the messages.

Solution

When customers see an offer or sale messages in their notifications they definitely check because everyone wants to get benefits of low price deals. Thus if we make sure to write quality content and use attractive templates then we will have more intentions, even in the huge number of emails.

Less Reach As Compared to Social Media Marketing

Email marketing has limited reach as compared to social media marketing because in email marketing we send a single email to a person while on social media if we understand the algorithm then our one post on social media can get views in millions. Same is the criteria for ads on social media they can be irrelevant but if properly handled ads can give us better results.

Solution

The only solution to limited reach in marketing is to make the quality of products very high level so that customers buys and becomes a reach for you in the form of referring your products to others

Finding Talents

In order to get the maximum benefits of emails marketing is to make the content appealing and then using tools which have high level marketing templates. A person should be a master of using email marketing tools. You cannot do it on your own when you have other stuff to do. Finding the right talent who can manage this outreach is very difficult and budgetary for email marketers.

Solution

The solution to your search of finding a perfect talent for your email marketing campaigns is to take his skills test by arranging a meeting and then asking him about multiple queries about benefits and drawbacks of email marketing. Ask him to provide solutions to most of the problems you are facing in setting and running an email marketing campaign.

Conclusion

FAQs About Advantages and Disadvantages of email marketing

Here are the Frequently Asked Questions about pros and cons of email marketing;