Data suggest that Email Marketing continues to be one of the best strategies if you take into account the ROIs. It means that while the expenditures and investments of an email marketing campaign are low, the end returns from the same can be meteoric!
This is why almost all businesses (especially B2B companies) are running email marketing campaigns right through the year. According to stats, more than 70% of the US population uses emails.
Given the large percentage of people using emails, it comes as no surprise that newer strategies have still not been able to outperform the old favorite- email marketing.
In this article, we try to answer a question that has come up in everyone’s mind at some point or the other. If Gmail and Outlook are the best email services we currently have, why are they so poor when it comes to executing email marketing campaigns?
In this section, we are going to discuss some of the major advantages of email marketing campaigns-
The above advantages make email marketing still the preferred option for millions of businesses of all shapes and sizes.
There is no doubt that both Gmail and Outlook are the best email service providers that we currently have in the market. However, when it comes to email marketing campaigns, they fall short on many counts.
It is true that when it comes to sending personal emails, both perform flawlessly. But what happens when you are looking at an email campaign that has thousands of email ids?
If you are using Gmail or Outlook, the first thing you will note is how all the processes are manually adjusted. Just to give you a simple example, you cannot set the timing for the mails to be sent. This is something so elementary that even the most basic of email marketing software provides for. Everything from selecting groups to the time is manual. This can cost you a lot of time if you are looking to send thousands of emails.
Bigger businesses send email campaigns that include millions of email ids. If you were to be using Gmail or Outlook, the number of emails you would most likely send would be 100-500. If you try to send more, the same is simply not possible. This severely curtails mass email campaigns and hinders the overall objectives and KPIs of sales and marketing teams concerning email marketing.
Most marketing managers are frustrated because of their G-suite accounts getting temporarily blocked by Gmail. If people report your emails as spam, Gmail is swift enough to take severe actions leading to account blockage and suspensions. This can be highly frustrating especially if you are in the middle of a serious campaign. You would then need to email Gmail support and request them to reinstate your G-suite as soon as possible.
Ask any expert and they will vouch for the role played by personalization in creating successful email marketing campaigns. How many times have we felt special when an email was addressed to us by our first name? This personalization can radically alter the results you are looking for from your email marketing. However, with Google and Outlook, you do not have the option of sending personalized emails to your recipients.
Gmail or Outlook was never intended to send bulk emails or be part of email marketing campaigns. As such they do not offer data and analytics like-
As you can see, all these analytics are critical for understanding the success or failure of an email marketing strategy.
The past few years have seen several credible and tech-heavy email marketing platforms come up to help businesses. It should be pointed out that all the limitations that have been mentioned above do not find a mention on a professional email marketing platform.
You will be able to collect data, analytics and get exact feedback on the status of your email marketing campaigns. You will also be able to do A/B testing and understand which campaign works better.
Also, you do not have to worry about IP addresses and reputation and the needlessness of getting blocked. More importantly, it has been shown that the best email marketing platforms carry a level of credibility that ensures that emails are not going to the Spam Folder of the recipients.
With tons of customization and the ability to personalize mass email campaigns, choosing a professional email marketing platform over Gmail or Outlook makes a lot of sense.
If you do not want to be constrained by the limitations that Gmail and Outlook place, you are better off with a professional email marketing platform. There is a reason why everyone from Apple to Microsoft continues to use email marketing as its number one strategy for building relationships and engaging in promotional communication- It Works!
