Why Email Marketing is Still a Huge Tool for Businesses

Don't believe what you hear, folks. Email marketing is still alive and kicking!

• More than 200 million emails are sent out every minute of the day. 
• 72% of U.S. adults say they prefer companies to communicate with them via email.
• 91% of U.S. adults say they'd like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with. 
• 73% of companies agree email marketing is a core part of their business efforts.
• 25% of companies rate email as their top channel in terms of return on investment. 

These statistics prove that email is still a heavily used communication platform for consumers, brands, and marketers alike. Email marketing isn't going anywhere, and here's why: 

1. It has distinct advantages over social. Social may be more effective than email in some cases, but you can't expect one medium to do it all. Email marketing allows marketers to offer relevant and insightful content to an audience that has willingly subscribed and it eager to learn more. In addition, most Internet users (nearly 90 percent, as per 2012 data) are also email users, while only 70 percent have a social-media account. If you want to reach a majority of your audience, email is still the most effective method to do so.  Email is still a superlative channel to use to drive sales, customer acquisition and customer retention, while social media’s value really lies in customer engagement. Comparing the two channels is like comparing apples and oranges! 
2. It's evolving. Brands can now monitor, measure, test and tweak emails to drive customer engagement. Additionally, many new technologies show great promise of changing the email marketing game into a platform that helps brands deliver cross-channel experiences. There are some key email trends you should watch for: wearable technology will change how brands communicate with email subscribers; following email's transition to mobile, the need to develop better and more creative content will become stronger than ever;  hyper-targeted, location-based email marketing will surface, thanks to the integration of proximity and geolocation applications into emails; video will play a bigger role in email marketing; predictive analytics will drive behavioral email marketing.
3. It's effective when executed correctly.  People who think email is passé are probably not using it properly. For instance, one of the biggest challenges of email marketing is that a very small percentage of subscribers actually read newsletters. Now, if the read rate of your newsletters is pathetically low, it doesn’t necessarily mean that email is dead- it means your newsletters fail to pique audience interest. Ask yourself: Is the tone of content impersonal and promotional, or is it friendly and helpful? Are you having a conversation with the reader, or talking “at” them? Are you driving meaningful one-on-one engagement? 

Now you know- email isn't dying! It's changing and evolving as new technology becomes available, but it certainly is not dying. Read more from Entrepreneur.