Email has long been a trusted and straightforward way for marketers to reach their audiences. With the click of a button, one carefully crafted message populates the inboxes of hundreds of thousands of people. This reachability factor of email marketing would appear to be an advantage, but what many companies fail to take into account is one elementary yet ever-important lesson: quality over quantity.

THE ILLUSION OF REACHABILITY

The largest threat to email marketing is simply the fact that the strategy has become so widely used by companies big and small in the last few decades. Every day, our inboxes are inundated with promotions and ads of all kinds. The high volume of emails sent out may give a marketer a false sense of effectiveness in their efforts, creating an illusion of reachability. Meanwhile, these emails typically take a back seat to personal, work-related, or other “top-priority” messages. Those carefully crafted email marketing messages are pushed further and further down into the inbox abyss, some never to be opened, let alone read. In fact, the average email open rate ranges from approximately 15-25%, indicating that the majority of emails are, unfortunately, deemed nonessential or spam. The task then becomes to focus on quality over quantity, which will ultimately increase the chances of any given email even being opened by a potential client or customer.

CLOSING THE PREFERENCE GAP

This all begs the question of the efficacy of targeted ads vs. random ads in terms of audience and content. Consumers’ preferences for each type of marketing tactics vary with their demographics, most notably age. Younger demographics prefer targeted ads, while older demographics are more comfortable with randomly generated ads. This information gives insight into how email marketing’s course can, in fact, be extended. Applying emerging trends in preferences to a somewhat dated marketing practice allows for email marketing to stick around, perhaps a little bit longer than expected.  

GENERATION Z — CHANGING THE GAME OF MARKETING

In addition to diversifying your email marketing strategy with demographic-based tactics, it is also important to diversify your company’s marketing plan as a whole. If technological trends persist, email will continue to be one-upped by new forms of marketing. Younger people not only prefer targeted ads, but they also tend to check their inboxes significantly less than Millenials do. Gen Z, characterized by ages approximately 8 to 23, lives in a fast-paced, digital world where texts take precedence over email. Always on the go, Gen Z has revolutionized the rules of consumerism and of marketing as we know it in just a few short years, with social media marketing, influencers, and mobile apps galore. Undoubtedly, they will continue to do so at rapid speeds as they begin to enter the working world.  

AUTHENTICITY GOES A LONG WAY  

One stand-out way to effectively reach your audience — specifically Gen Z — is to cater to their values. Gen Z is notorious for valuing authenticity and transparency in companies. Combined with their appreciation for technology and tendency to live life in the fast lane, authenticity drives many of Gen Z’s purchasing behaviors. Similarly, IgnitePOST is committed to efficiency and technology-driven solutions, and it just so happens that authenticity is the main ingredient in our marketing strategy. Handwritten letter services hold great potential to diversify your company’s marketing plan, all the while reaching the economy’s up-and-coming biggest spenders from the get-go. Authentic and personal forms of marketing not only resonate with younger audiences but also are appreciated by people of all ages.

EMAIL MARKETING: HERE TO STAY, BUT NOT THE ONLY SOLUTION

The main takeaway here is that integrating other, innovative forms of marketing into your strategy will yield the greatest results. Using highly authentic, profit-yielding services like IgnitePOST’s handwritten cards and letters will allow your business to grow with the trends now emerging in the marketing sector. Statistically speaking, IgnitePosts’ letter services see 21.3x higher response rates than average email marketing campaigns. Email marketing should not be abandoned, as it will remain a reliable means of communication. However, it is important to approach it with a deliberate audience in mind in order to maximize engagement.