Just like any other marketing channel, email marketing has pros and cons. Let’s briefly dive into some of the more significant ones:
Advantages of Email Marketing
Email Is Permission-based
When a customer trusts you with their email address, it’s the virtual equivalent of being given the keys to their house. Gaining permission to enter rather than showing up uninvited increases the chances of engagement and conversion.
Affords You Direct Access to Your Audience
You can communicate directly with subscribers on their schedules. In addition, because people check their emails daily, your email is likely to be viewed.
Gives You More Control
With most other marketing platforms, you don’t own the platform. If the platform ceases to exist, all your hard work sinks with it.
With email, you own the relationships you forge with your subscribers.
More Personalization Capabilities
You can use demographic or psychographic data to create personalized and hyper-targeted campaigns. Research shows segmented and personalized campaigns increase revenue by as much as 760 percent.
Measurable
Measuring the effectiveness of a marketing campaign is crucial, and automated email marketing makes measuring your campaign a breeze.
Scalable
Email marketing campaigns can scale without putting a strain on your resources or compromising quality.
Disadvantages of Email Marketing
Tough Competition
Standing out in a cluttered inbox can be quite a challenge. You have to be creative to ensure your emails get noticed and opened.
You Need an Email List
With email marketing, you must already have an email list for your campaigns to be effective.
Tricky Rules and Regulations to Navigate
There are a lot of rules governing the use of email for commercial purposes. Common examples include GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and CCPA. All of these state you can’t send unsolicited emails.
Unfortunately, some subscribers also report your emails as being spam even after they subscribed to the list. As a result, your sender reputation takes a hit.
Delivery and Deliverability Issues
Getting your email to land in receivers’ inboxes is not guaranteed. To run effective email marketing campaigns, you must contend with delivery and deliverability issues.