Is Email Marketing Still Relevant For Startups?

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As a startup, you’re going to be spoilt for choice with different marketing options. Social media ads, PPC, link building, SEO: there are so many that it can be hard to know where to start! If you’re feeling overwhelmed, it could be wise, to begin with a strategy that’s been tried and tested, like email marketing.

But is this older technique past its prime, or could it be just what your enterprise needs?

In this guide, we’ll look at what email marketing is, the many ways this form of marketing can be used to benefit your new business and whether email marketing tools are still relevant for startups in 2022. So, let’s take a look.

Check out our comprehensive article on the best email marketing platforms: 20+ Best Email Marketing Services .

What is Email Marketing?

The term email marketing actually encapsulates a number of different email-based strategies with in digital marketing. These can be split into three basic categories:

Untargeted cold-emailing
Targeted cold-emailing
Emailing a contact list

Untargeted cold-emailing involves sending your marketing to any email address you can get your hands on – often adopting a ‘shotgun approach’. You might send them a message that introduces them to your services or minimum lovable product, for example, and hope that some of the people you email take notice.

Targeted cold-emailing uses the same cold-call template, but with an email list of prospects in your target audience.

Brands also frequently create email lists of customers or existing leads. They can then send them a variety of marketing content, including:

News of sales or new products
Products they may be interested in
Brand updates/newsletters
Discount codes
Product tutorials and relevant how-to guides

The latter is the most common form of email marketing, though all three can be beneficial to startups.

What’s the Purpose of Email Marketing?

Marketing via email can have a huge range of purposes that vary from business to business. Almost any common brand goal can be furthered by sending out a few choice emails! One of the most common is encouraging leads to buy products.

For example, a customer may have added a product to their shopping cart before leaving the website without buying it. This can trigger an email to be sent automatically using a prospecting tool, reminding them that the item is still in the cart. A clever marketing tactic would then be to offer a small discount, encouraging them to convert.

Employing a full-service email marketing agency can enhance this strategy by leveraging their expertise in crafting compelling email campaigns, managing lists, and optimizing send times to increase conversion rates.

This just scratches the surface of what email marketing can do, though. Other purposes you could harness include:

Educating your audience about a relevant topic
Encouraging them to attend events/webinars
Improving your brand identity
Building loyalty and gaining trust
Sharing other content as part of a wider content marketing strategy

The possibilities are almost endless! Before starting an email marketing strategy or using any email marketing plugins, be sure you’re clear on your end goals to create a cohesive campaign.

Is Email Marketing Still Relevant For Startups?

Email is certainly one of the older digital tools, but that doesn’t make it any less relevant. There are still plenty of people who have an email address and check their inbox regularly, and marketing via email comes with a whole host of benefits that businesses can tap into. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Marketers Love It

It’s not uncommon for email to be amongst the favourite strategies of professional marketers. This poll puts it at the top, with 35% of marketers rating it as a good strategy and 18% rating it as excellent. It beat out social media marketing, SEO, content marketing and more to end up in the top spot.

Small Costs, Large Return

As a startup, you’re likely to want to keep your marketing costs low. But, you don’t want to spend so little that you struggle to get your business off the ground. That’s where successful email marketing shines and can give you an increased ROI.

You need very little to begin a marketing campaign, with only minor costs coming from obtaining a business email address, any email templates and automation tools you use, and the time it takes to create and send emails. If you do all of this on your own, your costs are going to be incredibly small.

The ROI, however, is huge. The return on investment for a strong campaign can be as high as 4400%. In other words, for every £1 you put in, you could see £44 in return.

A Huge Demographic

When it comes to the size of the audience, there isn’t much that beats email. With over 4 billion users of email around the globe through various service providers, this marketing strategy offers up a huge demographic. Even if your brand industry is incredibly niche, you’ll still find a lot of your target audience have emails that you could be used for marketing.

You Need a Solid Marketing Campaign

It’s clear that email marketing is a technique that’s not just alive but thriving. However, to take advantage of the benefits, you do need a strong campaign. Here are a few tips to ensure your startup creates a winning strategy to boost your business quickly:

Avoid sending too many emails to your contact list (one a week is more than enough)
Ensure your copy is professional, engaging, and well-written
Create well-designed templates that match your brand image
Always use interesting subject lines to boost open rates
Personalise your emails for individuals
Listen to any feedback you receive from your audience
Include strong and enticing calls to action.
Check your email security compliances with an email header analyzer to make sure your email will not land in the spam folder.

It’s also vital that you harness your data. Monitor the success of emails that are sent on different days, at different times, and that contain different types or styles of content. Slowly, you’ll be able to perfect your campaign to suit your audience, ensuring every email you send has a high chance of converting the recipient.

Final Words

Email marketing is a strategy of gaining leads and converting your audience that’s very much alive and kicking! If you’re looking into boosting your startup’s sales, don’t dismiss it. This could be just the low-cost, high-return campaign that you’ve been looking for.