Marketing has come a long way since the first email was delivered.

Advances like search engine marketing and social media have left businesses with an abundance of channels to leverage in order to reach their target demographic.

Why then, in this era of real-time socially-driven marketing, do businesses continue to feature email as a staple of their marketing strategy?

As recently as 2014, more than 50% of marketers surveyed by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) planned to increase spending on their email channel, citing their remarkable return on investment as the driving factor.

So what is it about this marketing channel that keeps savvy businesses coming back for more?

  1. Gives you actionable insights

One of the biggest benefits of a good email-marketing program is detailed statistics about a campaign.

Compared with other marketing channels — such as a billboard or television commercial — email-marketing metrics provide exponentially more information about the success, or failure, of a marketing campaign.

Conversions from emails are clearly defined making easier to repeat, contrary to the ambiguous nature of more traditional broadcast marketing techniques.

For an email-marketing app, opens and clicks are standard — but you can easily dig deeper and see the time recipients spend reading emails, and the devices they use to access them. Monitoring these analytics delivers incredibly valuable — & actionable — insight into what’s working and what isn’t with your campaign.

2. Email forces you to be a better marketer

The foundation of a wholesome email marketing campaign — even before content — is your recipient list.

Defining and segmenting business contacts and deciding which emails to send to whom forces small businesses to take a more intensive and scientific look at their target demographics. This type of detailed analysis aids the rest of a small business’s marketing mix as well.

A detailed understanding of your audience and what makes them tick is vital to successfully targeting search terms for SEO/PPC, aligning your brand with the appropriate accounts on social networks, structuring your website for conversion optimization and possibly finding the correct messaging for your next radio spot.

3. Frees up time so you can run your business

Most good things take time — some more than others.

For small businesses that operate without the resources of a large marketing department, everyday life involves a cost-benefit analysis of all marketing channels.

The average Mailify client spends 20 – 40 minutes on his or her very first email campaign with us. In that time this individual is able to set up the app, design a template import his or her data, test it and feel the rush of pressing “send.”

4. Protects your bottom line

The reality of small business marketing is that everything comes down to ROI, and the quicker the better.

Every single marketing dirham counts, and that’s what draws small businesses to email marketing.

It’s estimated that for every dollar spent on email marketing, the return is AED163 (US$44.25), according to the DMA. Although this statistic should be taken with a grain of salt, it’s not difficult to see how email-marketing can consistently deliver outstanding returns.

Email targets the low-hanging fruit (your database of contacts) in an attempt to either re-engage previous customers, cross-sell to existing clients or move new leads further down the sales funnel

When you apply email to your current relationships, a non-invasive method is created of staying at the forefront of your contacts’ minds.