Many of you may have heard the expression ‘email is dead’, especially as there continues to be a rise in instant messaging tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams. But today, there are 4 billion email users worldwide, set to increase to 4.6 billion in 2025.
The world’s love affair with email is clearly continuing.
Why do we love email?
Let’s talk about the tactile reasons first. No matter if you’re using a paid email service or a freebie, you can do all these wonderful actions and communicate in an instant.
- There’s the feel of the keyboard as we type or tap.
- The delight when we press a webform and our little email envelope pops up, inviting us to write a message.
- We like how our contacts appear in the ‘To:’ pane as we type one or two letters.
- Our signature appears as we send a new message, making us feel like our name is important. Our little piece of the email ecosystem.
- We enjoy the thrill of sending attachments, contracts, or invoices, and that little whizzy sound email makes when it sends from your phone.
Since email’s invention 50-years ago, it is still the world’s favorite communication tool. We simply can’t get enough of it.
Is email still king, now that we have social?
New platforms and channels compete with email for our attention. But they still don’t dominate. Email is still the king of communications.
Let’s break that down a little:
Email has four billion accounts receiving 306 billion emails per day. That’s equal to a yearly number I can’t print here — it’s so incredibly large. Emails are used to interact with friends and family, customers, fans, subscribers, and for marketing.
Email pros
- Easy to share your address with anyone
- You can create personalized messages and send them multiple times
- It’s easy to create groups, subscribers, folders, and lists to get organized
- Email security is in your hands. You can moderate what you read.
- Spam tools, encryption, and privacy options for email range from basic to extensive.
- Email is established. There are lots of choices for consumers from free accounts to services with calendar, contacts, and document sharing capabilities and premium security.
Email cons
- Requires effort to attract subscribers if you are in business.
- Building a list takes time and you need to build other channels to get sign-ups to your email address.
It’s worth repeating: the small cost of professional email services benefits anyone who is running a list. Reputable services can ensure the latest security to keep out hackers, use sophisticated spam tools, and keep out spammers.
Social media pros
- Huge variety in audience reach and types of audiences
- Marketing to the public
- The ability to go viral
Social media cons
- Not so easy to reach your niche audiences
- Harder to segment your list of contacts
- Advertising costs
- The cost of moderation & removal of unwanted trolling or online abuse
- A small choice of platforms so advertising can quickly become expensive.
Social media is best thought of as an initial marketing funnel activity that attracts brand new customers and draws in existing customers to your website deals and offers. Email is a second and crucial touchpoint. This is where you write deals and offers in detail to an active list of subscribers. This is your hotlist, and email is king here because you can reach hot leads every time you have a great deal for a particular group.
Email vs. social
On that last point, did you know that 73% of millennial consumers prefer to receive information from an email?
Or that email is 40 times more effective for lead acquisition and conversion than social media?
Email spend ROI (return on investment) is around $44 per dollar single dollar invested. Social ROI is varied due to the difficulty in defining the audience.
We can conclude email is a better value for money. On social, although you can reach many people, you risk spending a lot with little return.
Chat windows vs. Email
Sometimes chat is preferred to email as a personal means of communication.
- It’s instant.
- Cute pinging sounds.
- Who doesn’t love a GIF?
- Sending handy links
Yet, email can be used for personal reasons, too.
- You can invite someone to an occasion,
- send a newsletter out to your sports team,
- or write your family’s Christmas letter.
When using chat boxes, instant messaging, or social media, alongside email for your business or brand, keep in mind 60% of customers expect brands to provide consistent information across all platforms.
The ability to send tailored emails
Social is snackable and visual, chat is quick, but email can be both fun and formal. Because you can tailor an email with headers, images, clever copy, and approaches you’ve thought about in advance, the average email open rate is 22%.
Email is still the best (and safest) way to send attachments, photos, and links without requiring an instant response, which is sometimes nice when you have a to-do list as long as your arm.
You can send emails anytime, day or night. And get subscribers while you sleep, which is better for your well-being if you are a solopreneur and just starting out!
We love using email at Namecheap, too. 1500 of our staff use our email product, Private Email. It’s our favorite way of communicating because we’re global, and everyone is in different time zones. Also, because it’s secure and completely private, we share essential company updates in emails that we wouldn’t do on the other channels we use for our teams, such as chat, or social media.
Email is king because domain branded emails work
Now I don’t mind a free email account. However, there are times when you just shouldn’t use one.
Picture this — you just met a guy selling muscle-building meals at your local gym. You like the sound of his business, you follow his Instagram account, and you’re looking forward to email contact.
A few weeks later, you can’t quite remember the gym guy’s name, and you get an email addressed to you from paulscrushcarbdiets@yahoo.com.
You wonder if it’s spam.
According to a well-known consumer behavior theory, people tend to over-weight any slight chance something could be wrong. Interesting huh?
There’s a bit of science behind this idea. The Prospect Theory tells us how people decide to choose between different options (or prospects) — like whether to open an email or relegate it to spam.
People are so hot-fingered they make this decision in under two seconds.
Avoid loss aversion — use trusted email
Having a domain email using your brand’s name rather than a free account gives you more chances of opens because people trust brands over free accounts.
Email recipients worry about spam emails. This is called ‘loss aversion.’ At all costs, they want to avoid any type of loss. On email, this equates to a fear of hackers.
Paul’s diet email arrived from a free email account, @yahoo.com. This seals the deal. You don’t open it. You’d instead delete the email and maybe go as far as dropping by the health food shop for some muscle-builder.
If only Paul, our solopreneur in the story, hadn’t wasted his in-person networking time with a poor follow-through.
Trusted business email names are in this format:
‘sendername@yourbusiness.com’
In Paul’s case, something like ‘Paul.Howell@crushcarbdiets.com’ looks a much safer bet and might make you curious enough to check if it was ‘that guy from the gym.’ You might go to his website too, crushcarbdiets.com, and become a happy customer.
Go with email
If you want to make sure your recipients feel safe, a domain email has a certain neatness to it, like going out with your shoelaces tied up.
Most importantly, when you create a professional email address, it dramatically improves the chance someone will open it, which is your brand’s gain.
To take your business to the next level, why not sign up for one of our Professional Business Email plans? Build trust. Don’t risk loss aversion and the spam bin.
An email offer just for you!
Between 3-9 August 2021, we’re celebrating Business Email week. You can join in too. We’re giving a massive 45% saving on all new Professional Business Email hosting plans here. That’s right, a 45% saving on your first year with us.
Why not start putting your best foot forward? The primary goal of sending email from a domain-branded email address is to make your business look professional. But, you can email your community, subscribers, or family contacts too — keeping everything organized in one place, all with Professional Business Email.
There are so many great reasons to use email over chat and social approaches. Do you agree? We’d love to hear your ideas or cases when you’d choose email over other ways of communication. Just leave us a comment below.
Is email still our best-loved business tool? .