7 reasons why email marketing is essential in a COVID world

Amongst all the confusion and uncertainty of 2020, businesses have desperately been trying to keep afloat. Navigating Covid-19 as successfully and efficiently as possible. Whilst also juggling short and long term strategy.

At the start of lockdown, panic set in for many businesses. This resulted in UK adspend diving 48% as brands pulled more than £1.1bn spend.

However, when thinking long term, keeping activity steady is more important than ever. After all, a decrease in marketing and communication results in a decrease in customer engagement.

Email marketing is one of the channels that is becoming increasingly essential for businesses in 2020 and beyond

Read on to learn why.

Maximise eCommerce

While many retail sales have struggled throughout lockdown and 2020. Online sales have actually remained strong.

Image Source:- ONS.GOV

Make the most of this peak in online shopping by focusing on eCommerce promotion. With email being the perfect channel to execute this.

Consider offers, competitions, replenishment campaigns, and recommended products to help drive traffic to your website and eCommerce stores.

Communicate the right message

It’s always important for brands to improve their communication with their audience. But now more so than ever.

Research shows that over 90% of brands are trying to deliver more empathy through marketing, but are struggling to do so effectively.

Email marketing offers brands a channel to quickly and easily communicate the right message with an engaged audience. It allows brands to carefully consider what they want to say, the visuals they wish to use, and deliver it in a non-invasive way.

Make the most of increased engagement

Since lockdown internet usage has increased by 70%. And open rates increased by 25% week-on-week.

As a marketer, why would you want to miss out on that?

Make the most of this peak in engagement by increasing your email communications to offer recipients useful, relevant, and interesting content to keep them entertained.

Reduce customers’ overwhelm

Right now, the last thing customers need is further overwhelm when it comes to purchasing.

Keep things simple for them by suggesting products and services that you know they will love.

Utilise personalisation data such as purchase history, real-time behaviour, and purchase intent to ensure the right products are shown to each customer. You can even offer different types of recommendations to suit each customer life-cycle stage.

Cost effective

Many businesses are understandably very cost-conscious right now.

Email offers one of the most cost-effective options compared to many other mainstream marketing channels.

There are no high print or postage fees. No specialist software required. And no additional headcount necessary.

Additionally, email campaigns can be fast to create and send. If needed, you can produce an email in less than an hour. Which is incredibly cost and resource effective.

Fantastic return on investment

With an estimated ROI of £32.28 for every £1 spent, one of the main reasons businesses invest in email marketing is the great ROI it offers.

And this is more important now than ever.

With budgets being cut and marketers keen to see positive results during difficult times. Email offers a cost effective channel that almost guarantees a positive return on investment.

This provides marketers with the perfect argument for increasing, or at least stabilising their marketing budget to continue engaging with their audience.

Drive sales and revenue

Right now marketers are doing everything they can to increase sales and revenue numbers. Often whilst on a limited budget.

It sounds impossible, but we can assure you it’s not.

Marketing Week reports that email generates around £29bn retail sales annually. Additionally, 59% of marketers say email is their biggest source of ROI.

With so much uncertainty, email marketing offers a fail-safe in terms of sales and revenue for brands who need a little reassurance right now.

Need a little help?

With customers spanning multiple industries and countries, we understand the challenges marketers are going through right now.

If you need some support, guidance, or even reassurance in navigating your marketing through Covid-19, our friendly team of experts are always on hand to help.