Email Marketing Turns 40: Here’s How It Still Benefits Your Business

• Updated on: 2018-11-18
• Read original article here

Believe it or not, 2018 marks 40 years since email was first used for marketing purposes. Rather than nearing midlife-crisis territory, however, email marketing remains very much in its prime. When used correctly, it’s a cost-effective way to promote your products and services, and ultimately drive business.

Email marketing has evolved significantly over the past four decades. Let’s take a brief look at the history of email marketing, and see how you can get the most out of it for your business.

It all started in 1978. Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager for Digital Equipment Corp., sent an email to 400 customers promoting the company’s equipment via ARPANET, which was the foundation for what we know today as the internet.

At the time, 400 recipients constituted “mass” email marketing, but the message Thuerk sent wasn’t exactly welcome. In fact, his message resulted in a number of complaints, and he later became known as the “Father of Spam.” The effort was a success, however, resulting in a whopping $13 million in sales.

Fast forward to the early 1990s, when the internet, along with email, started to become more widespread. Businesses of all types began sending hordes of email marketing messages, leading to an abundance of flooded inboxes.

Later that decade, in 1998, the Data Protection Act made it mandatory for email marketers to include the ability for users to opt out. That was followed by the CAN-SPAM Act in 2003, which laid regulatory groundwork for commercial emails in the U.S. Email continued to grow in popularity and became even more accessible in the 2000s with the rise of smartphones.

Today, more than 75 percent of the population uses email at least once per month, including more than 90 percent of internet users. This makes it one of the best ways to promote your business to potential customers.

Like most technologies that have become popular over the past 40 years, email marketing only keeps getting better and better. While spam remains a nuisance and can turn off some internet users, most people not only expect email marketing messages, they want them. In addition to driving revenue for small businesses, email marketing messages can be helpful to customers as they decide whether or not to purchase a particular product or service.

Here are three of the top email marketing benefits for small businesses:

While email campaigns can be effective, they only work if you have willing recipients to send them to. Here are three quick and easy ways to get existing and potential customers to sign up for your email list:

One of the main challenges of email marketing is deciding the types of messages to send. Here are six surefire ideas:

Email marketing may be 40 years old but, just as the cliche about fine wine goes, it keeps getting better with age. Because of its low startup cost and potentially huge return on investment, email marketing is a must for almost any type of small business. In addition, the ability to track results and gauge the effectiveness of email campaigns make it a no-brainer marketing tool.

There’s no telling what the next 40 years have in store for email marketers. But, for now, there’s no doubt that email should be a go-to resource in all business owners’ promotional arsenals.