7 Reasons Why Email Blasts Still Work Like a Charm

Who here has watched the Harry Potter films?

Remember Voldemort? They used to call him he-who-must-not-be-named. A person so taboo, you couldn't even take his name. A lot of e-marketers feel the same way about the termEmail Blast. They try to avoid it the best they can.

Type in email blasts on google, and you’ll find a few articles preaching to stop using that word. No marketer seemingly wants anything to do with it.

And It's understandable. The term has garnered a negative reputation over time. According to Google Trends, In just 10 years the interest in ‘email blast’ fell by 50%.

You hear it, and you think it implies spamming and lack of tact.

In truth, if you do send out mass emails without giving them much thought, that is a very spammy thing to do.Find out here why people open emails in the first place. On the other hand, if you send out meaningful emails to a segmented audience, large or small, that’s an email blast done correctly.

But wait, you may already be doing that. You refer to it as email campaign, promotion or newsletter series. Much nicer (and more accurate terms) but they carry the same meaning. This is what Michael Reynolds CEO of Capital Point Marketing has to say:

In reality, we want email to be strategic, targeted, personalized, and properly segmented. Additionally, we want the content to be simple, direct, to the point, and useful. With this in mind, the word "blast" seems a bit too intense.

So what’s the point? Do email blasts work or not?

Yes, and we’ll give you 7 reasons why they absolutely do.

Reason 1: Consumer Preference

Marketing Sherpa surveyed 2057 American adults, and they discovered that a whopping 70% of respondents still prefer email as the primary source of communication with companies.

The public’s preference for email as their go-to form of communication gives credence to the practice of email blasts. It suggests that in fact, the spammy perception of emails is not as prevalent as marketers think.

Reason 2: Exceptional ROI

For every $1 you spend on email marketing, the average return is a stellar $43 for businesses across the USA. Worldwide, email has a median (not average) ROI of 122% – over 4x higher than other marketing formats including social media, direct mail, and paid search.

With such an outrageous expected ROI, you should be looking to invest more heavily in email marketing campaigns (aka email blasts).

We wrote an article dedicated to increasing ROI through email. If you're interested in learning how to leverage one of the best marketing tools, find the article here.

Reason 3: Generate More Click-Throughs

Hubspot’s findings revealed that:

Companies that send 16 - 30 campaigns a month see a click rate more than 2X greater than the click rate of companies that carry 2 or fewer campaigns a month.

This means there is a direct correlation between the number of emails you send and the number of clicks you can generate through those emails.

Reason 4: Email Blasts are Effective and Easy

Ascend2 carried out a report on the effectiveness and difficulty of execution of marketing tactics in 2014. Most marketers believed that email was the most effective marketing channel (at 54%) with the least difficulty associated with implementation (11%).

These numbers again reflect the potential of a high ROI to be generated when email blasts are used correctly.

Reason 5: Acquisition Effectiveness

Consulting giants McKinsey studied the growth of consumer acquisition channels from 2009 to 2013 and found out that email marketing is preferred over social media and it has also picked up the pace in acquisition rates in comparison to organic search.

What this means is that email blasts are more effective than social media marketing and the rate at which customers are being acquired through email is increasing in relation to organic search as a channel.

Reason 6: Higher Visibility

ExactTarget reported that 91 percent of active consumers will check their email a minimum of one time per day, which means that more frequent large-scale email marketing blasts have a higher chance of being viewed multiple times during the day.

Reason 7: Higher Open Rates

This fact is an interesting one: 64% of subscribers open an email based on who it’s from, compared to 47% of subscribers who open emails based on the topic (the subject line).
Source: emailmonks

This means when readers receive broadcast emails, the most critical factor is who it's from. If your subscribers trust you and like your content, they won’t have a problem with you sending them valuable information.

This also means that you should never buy email lists, but rather build them ground up and have the right sort of people to share information with.

An Important Finishing Point

Now we’ve managed to exonerate email blasts of their negative connotations, and we’ve seen that they are very effective marketing tools. Just knowing this fact isn't enough though. Email blasts have to be done correctly, or your emails will start ending up in spam folders.

Good email blasts (or email campaigns) are done keeping a few factors in mind:

• Use dynamic content that appeals to various customer profiles
• Send different emails to different segments according to age, gender, location, etc.
• Always include a clear call to action (CTA)
• Nurture existing customers by building relationships by sending relevant content
• Never send an email you wouldn’t open yourself
• Always use email validation to prevent hard bounces that could hurt your deliverability.

If you’re looking to improve your email marketing strategy, MailMunch provides you the perfect tools to grow your email list. Get started today!