Email marketing isn’t nearly what it used to be back in the 1990s or even the 2000s.

You’d read almost every email (especially in the 90s) and open rates were beyond comparison. 

But this era is gone and “today” looks somewhat different.

We’ve all become email-insensitive.

With tons of spam and pushy unsolicited offers flooding your inbox – you have to cut through a lot of noise to get to what’s important. 

But does that mean that email marketing is gone?

Should you perhaps focus on social media, paid ad campaigns or growing your Facebook community instead? 

Well, you can hold off on all of that because evidence shows it’s not really the case. 

Despite serious ‘devaluation’ of email as a means of driving revenue , it still stands pretty strong.  

Depending on the source email marketing is said to yield anything between 1:37 and 1:44  in return on investment (ROI). That means that every dollar spent on your email campaign should return 37-44 dollars.  

In the eCommerce world, it’s not uncommon to hear that stores make about 25% of the entire year’s revenue only during Black Week craze.

Another example, according to this study, 72% of people chose email as their preferred method of communication. 

It feels more intimate and there’s just less distraction compared to social media. Especially if your communication relies on engaging, valuable content. 

The opposite of that would be sending emails packed with images of your products with big, flashy discounts screaming at you.

Another benefit of having your own email list is simply owning it. 

Because no matter how successful you are with your paid ad campaigns —your account can get shut overnight, sometimes with no apparent reason. 

So if you’re not in full control of your own list or community you’re vulnerable to policy changes, compliance issues or account shutdown.

Moreover, attention shifts and if people switch over to new, emerging channels (like TikTok for example )—your targeting potential will drop. 

Is Facebook going to rule social media forever?

While there’s surely no Exodus, the number of accounts on Facebook has been falling consistently in the last two or three years.  

Now, is email going away?

This is much less likely.

But as everything, building your list takes some effort and it has its challenges too. 

One of them is attracting the right audience. 

Nowadays, in the era of businesses giving away their best knowledge and strategies, it’s easy to attract (too many) freebie-seekers.

Freebie seekers are like ghosts on your list. You know they’re there but when it comes to buying from you they play hide-and-seek. 

Once they get their free thing, they typically won’t read your emails anymore.

What’s the best way to deal with them? 

There are many ways and very detailed segmentation as well as setting up specific triggers should let your emails reach the right (more engaged) people. 

This, in turn, will drastically increase your open and click-through rates and therefore your sending reputation. 

Every now and then you can also call those people out and tell them you’ll simply remove them. Many email marketers do that without scruples. 

The easiest way to start building a list for your store is to create a lead magnet and add an opt-in feature on your website. 

A lead magnet could be, for example, an e-book with some valuable tips, a quiz or even the classics of all classics—discount wheel. 

And once they’re on the list…

Well, this is material for another post. Or a few, more likely.