By Jason Nichols on December 05 ,2018

Email marketing is a successful marketing tool for all businesses. Some businesses find success with  zero email marketing, while, other businesses depend upon email marketing for their success. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of email marketing to help determine if email marketing is the right step to take for your business.

First let’s look at the pros of email marketing.

1. Cost Savings – People only need to respond to an electric form to sign up for email marketing, while a standard print marketing such as postcards and flyers will incur printing and postage costs. Email marketing is a free tool in comparison to standard mail marketing.
2. Tracking – When you use email marketing you can track to see which emails were received, which emails are no longer active and who unsubscribed. This will help you to really target your marketing audience.
3. Time – A marketing email can be created in minutes or hours and reach millions of people.
4. Effectiveness – Almost every email marketing platform will offer you a set of analytics that will allow you see how your email marketing campaign is engaging to your subscribers. You can track what works well and what doesn’t work well with this technique.
5. Relationships – Email marketing helps you build relationships with your clients. Emails can help your subscribers see the personal side of your business and help get to know you. When a client feels that they know you, they are more likely to do business with you.
6. Customize – You are able customize every email as much or as little as you want. Every message can be targeted, which is not something that is available in other marketing campaigns. Being able to target specific or multiple demographics is a great tool that you cannot achieve as easily with traditional blanket mail marketing.
7. Brand – Your brand is the message that your subscribers receive when they see the logo. The design, colors, and text of your branding is an important visual. This can help you to establish your brand.

Now let’s look at the cons of email marketing.

1. Unsubscribing – When you send out emails, they most likely have an unsubscribe link on them. The minute your emails become annoying is when the client will hit the unsubscribe button. Emails must always deliver high quality content to be effective and that is ultimately why email marketing efforts in this area typically fail.
2. Unopened Emails – Some subscribers won’t bother opening your email. This can be due to the client getting too many emails, not checking their in boxes, or having incorrect email addresses.
3. Spam Filters – Spam filters can take a lot of emails and move them before the client ever has a chance to see them. This is why many email marketers encourage subscribers to add the email to their safe list.
4. Constant Updating – No one wants to do business with a company that is overzealous with their email marketing campaigns. There needs be a careful balance in the amount of emails they are receiving in order for your email marketing to be effective.
5. Responsive Design – It’s impossible to know which device a customer will use to view your email. It could be their laptop or their phone. This means your emails must have a responsive design in order to look professional on every device and every browser. Setting these up can be painstaking, but we use an email marketing system that automates everything.
6. Almost Everyone Uses Email Marketing – There is a lot of email marketing happening today. In order for your emails to stand out, you have to be different somehow. Be creative!
7. Not A Personal Touch – Most people know you’ve written a form letter. But the good news is, most people overlook this. Try to add a little bit of creativity and personality to email campaigns to connect with your clients!

The pros and cons of email marketing show that it can be an easy and cost-effective way to reach an unlimited about of current and potential clients. It could also become the first step to a negative experience for your business and your clients if it is not properly managed.

Here at Vetsweb, we use MailChimp to deliver our campaigns. Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform and an email marketing service. When we send out emails using Mailchimp we can track and see who opens it, who unsubscribes from the email and who never looks at it. Mailchimp also makes sure your emails actually make it to your clients’ inboxes versus their spam folder. If you’re interested in email marketing and creating marketing campaigns that will stand out to your clients, please send us a message and we’ll be happy to help you get started!