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Email marketing is an excellent medium for directly engaging customers, but it comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. A small error in your email marketing campaigns can become a huge branding mistake. A popular retail brand, for example, once had to send an apology email to its list because it accidentally sent the same email multiple times. This became an embarrassing issue for the brand, and they had to cover up the chaos with an email apology.

In this article, we will delve into the advantages, disadvantages, and regulatory considerations surrounding email marketing to help you create better all-round campaigns.

Advantages of Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most popular marketing channels for a reason. It comes with a host of advantages for B2C brands, such as:

1. High ROI

Unlike traditional marketing channels such as TV, print, or radio advertising, email marketing is both efficient and cost-effective. It offers an unmatched return on investment. The average ROI for an email campaign is $36 for every $1 spent.

2. Journey-based Marketing

Journey-based marketing involves sending the right communications to customers at the right time. For this, you’ll have to analyze the customer’s journey and figure out the best communication for each point in the journey. Once this is done, you can set up automated customer journey-based emails to be sent at strategic times.

3. Hyper-Personalization

When you personalize your emails, you’re letting your customers know that you understand them and their needs. This has a direct impact on metrics such as open rates, click rates, and conversion rates. Studies show that personalization increases conversion rates by up to 16X. Hyper-personalized emails also drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails.

4. Segmentation

Personalization goes hand in hand with segmentation. Segment customers according to their purchase history, interests, demographics, and psychographics and send out personalized campaigns accordingly. Studies show that behavior-based segmentation increases critical metrics such as open and conversion rates by as much as 9X.

Disadvantages of Email Marketing

While email marketing provides many advantages, there are also potential risks associated with this channel, such as:

1. Deliverability Issues

The average bounce rate for an email marketing campaign is 10.4 percent. Emails can end up in the spam folder due to multiple reasons. Use of suspicious keywords like “make money”, “earn cash” and similar terms can increase the chances of being flagged as spam. Inadequate email authentication protocols like Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) can become another major factor that results in the emails ending up in the spam folder.

2. Privacy and Compliance Issues

Strict regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union and the CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act) in the United States require businesses to obtain prior consent from customers before sending them marketing emails. If a business fails to comply with the same, they will have to pay heavy penalties.

3. Irrelevant Email Lists

It’s tedious to manually maintain a list of relevant customer emails and keep an eye on subscribers and unsubscribes. It’s best to automate and leave the details to a reliable email marketing platform for such things. You should also regularly clean out inactive and outdated email IDs from your email list.

4. Reputation Risk

A compliance issue, grammatical error, poor design, or similar mistakes in email marketing campaigns can quickly hamper the reputation of your brand. A damaged brand reputation can directly impact customer trust and company sales. To prevent this, make sure you double-check every aspect of your email before you send it out.

5. Device Compatibility

An email template that is compatible with your web browser may not give you an ideal viewing experience on your mobile phone. You must ensure that the emails are well-optimized for viewing on mobile devices because 41 percent of email views come from mobile devices. If your subject lines are too long, they’ll get truncated, and your messaging experience won’t be as good as expected.

For example, an iPhone cuts off email subject lines over 32 characters. To make the iPhone customer engage with the email, the subject line should catch the reader’s interest within 32 characters. A poorly designed email can lead customers to lose interest in the brand and create a weak brand image.

6. Omnichannel Strategy

Email marketing should not be the only channel to reach your customers. There are multiple factors that can break down the email marketing machinery, like changes in laws surrounding email marketing, a shift in consumer behavior, or your domain being marked as spam. Brands must ensure a good mix of marketing channels in their strategy, and this omnichannel approach should also take customer preferences into mind.

Regulatory Considerations for Email Marketing

As an email marketer, you should always be aware of and compliant with the following regulatory considerations across different parts of the globe:

CAN-SPAM Act (US)

The CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act) states that customers must have a clear and easy way to opt out of any future emails. These opt-out requests must be acted upon within 10 business days. It also states that subject lines should not be deceptive and must reflect the true content of the email. Emails must also include the physical postal address of the sender.

GDPR (UK)

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is implemented in the European Union to govern how the personal data of EU citizens should be handled. Among other things, the GDPR states that businesses need to have clear consent and all the necessary permissions from customers for using their data for marketing purposes.

CASL Laws (Canada)

Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) aims to protect Canadians from unsolicited or harmful digital communications. Recipients must provide properly documented consent for receiving marketing messages. Organizations that fail to comply with CASL Laws are fined up to CAD 10 million per violation.

Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (UK)

GDPR and PECR work hand in hand in the United Kingdom to protect the privacy of individuals when using electronic communications. It’s important to use a proper unsubscribe callout and clear disclaimers before using cookies to collect personal data. The Information Commission Officer (ICO) is responsible for enforcing Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations; they have the authority to impose fines of up to £500,000 in cases of a serious data breach.

Collecting Zero-Party Data

Zero-party data is information a customer is willing to share with a brand to improve their customer experience. This additional data can allow email marketers to micro-segment customers and send targeted emails for each segment. This gives the emails a touch of hyper-personalization and can improve customer engagement and open rates while creating a positive impact on brand loyalty.

Overcoming the Challenges of Email Marketing

Now that you’ve understood the advantages, disadvantages, and regulatory considerations of email marketing, here are some effective ways to overcome the challenges and kick-start your next campaign.

Clean and Maintain Your Email List

Sunsetting is a strategy that keeps email lists clean by removing inactive customers. Inactive customers decrease the deliverability ratio of emails and increase the risk of being marked as spam.

Brands should employ organic email collection methods instead of purchasing an email list. A high unsubscribe rate can also result in low deliverability of emails and increase the risk of being marked as spam.

Optimize Your Campaigns

Studying the performance metrics of your past email marketing campaigns can provide solid insights into customer response. A low open rate, for example, can be due to a weak subject line that fails to capture interest. Performance metrics must be analyzed regularly, and email marketing campaigns should be optimized accordingly.

Conclusion

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to communicate directly with customers. However, companies must ensure that they follow regulations religiously and do not breach customer privacy in any way. The trick to ace this medium of communication is to hyper-personalize emails, trigger emails in a systematic and non-spammy format, and incorporate engaging visuals and elements. By using these strategies, you can make your emails shine in crowded inboxes while generating an excellent return on investment.