Email Is Still a Great Marketing Tool Despite the Bad Press

Email marketing is a great addition to any content strategy, but challenges persist in overcoming negative perceptions of the electronic missives.

More than 294 billion emails are sent a day, leading to such headlines as Big Think’s “Email is Getting Out of Hand and Must Be Stopped.”

According to Gloria Mark, an informatics professor at University of California, Irvine, who studies multi-tasking in workplace, the “unrelenting presence” of so many emails is causing stress.

“People who did not look at e-mail regularly at work were less stressed and more productive than others,” Mark told Big Think.

Despite this, developing an audience of email subscribers can be an invaluable asset for marketers. Anyone who subscribes to an email is raising their hand, saying they are loyal to the brand and want to receive more information.

The best way to make sure emails are read and well received is to provide content that brings value. Content marketers can best ensure their emails are being read with clear calls to action and good use of photos. They can also guard against people unsubscribing by making content within emails exclusive and humorous, such as what Groupon does.

Online media companies such as DailyCandy and Thrillist have found success with email marketing and serve to counter the notion that email marketing is dead.

Image courtesy of rambergmedia.com/flickr