19 Email Marketing Benefits

Hey there, fellow marketer! 

Here, you’ll get a detailed breakdown of 19 specific email marketing benefits, showing exactly why email marketing deserves a prime spot in your content marketing strategy.

I’ll highlight standout advantages, like a higher ROI, direct audience engagement, and the ability to personalize at scale while keeping things simple and effective. 

Let’s get started and explore why your next email campaign could be the best one yet!

5 top benefits of email marketing

• High ROI — effective email marketing can get up to 1:45 ROI.
• Access to unique customer data — it offers detailed insights into audience interactions and purchasing behaviors, which helps craft emails that resonate with your customers and boost conversion.
• Measurable results — email marketing provides easy access to key performance metrics like open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, conversions, and unsubscribes, allowing you to quickly spot what’s working and optimize campaigns.
• Budget optimization — email marketing is cost-effective thanks to scalable pricing and precise audience targeting, giving a chance to get great results with minimal spending.
• Hyperpersonalization — use advanced data management and AI to send good emails that are highly tailored on a regular basis.

Investment benefits of email marketing

High ROI

Recent industry research (from Litmus) shows that each $1 business owner spends on email marketing can bring them up to $45 in return!

Why is that? 

With an email marketing strategy in place, you’re connecting directly to the audience’s inboxes, bypassing all the distractions. 

Compared to paid ads, email offers a more cost-effective way to engage. Every email can be laser-focused on the audience’s specific needs, prompting them to take action — whether it’s visiting a site, making a purchase, or just raising brand awareness.

Low operational costs

Mailchimp, one of the most popular email marketing platforms, offers various plans for different numbers of recipients. For example, here are the Standard plan fees:

• 10,000 recipients — $135/month ($0.0135 per recipient)
• 50,000 recipients — $450/month ($0.009 per recipient)
• 100,000 recipients — $800/month ($0.008 per recipient)

So the operational cost of emailing a single person is ~$0.01. Many platforms stack your plan with essential features like email templates, AI-driven copywriting, basic analytics, and automation, so I don’t count these additionally.

Now, according to Klaviyo’s research, the average email marketing revenue per recipient for the e-commerce niche is ~$0.11.

Of course, the cost can vary as you extend your team, grow your email list, scale your bulk email campaigns, or switch to manual copywriting and email design. 

But a rough calculation leaves us with just 1/11th of a campaign revenue spent on operations. 

Low customer base growth cost

I build my email list via email opt-ins (with web forms and pop-ups) and social media integrations. All of which are among the most cost-effective tactics. 

Sign-up forms are often included in email marketing platform plans and the same goes for social media integrations for email opt-ins. But note that the free or paid nature of these auxiliary features depends on the service providers, sometimes they appear only on higher plans. 

Also, you can get more subscribers by offering lead magnets like special discounts or downloadable content. 

The cost of the discount will vary depending on your product pricing — the more expensive the product, the higher the cost per lead.

As for downloadable content like eBooks or whitepapers, they can cost between $125 to $6,000 if you hire a copywriter, according to Growthzacks. Plus, $100-$400 for an eBook design.

The ROI range for this one is broad because it depends on your industry’s conversion rates, product/service pricing, and the campaign scale. However, the benefit is that the content is a one-time expense, and it can keep bringing you new customers for months. 

Also, you can stay within, or even under, the budget by using AI for eBook and whitepaper writing and/or editing. For example, a ChatGPT subscription is only $20-$30/month. And for the design, you can use Adobe’s free eBook editor.

Once you’ve grown your email list, keeping potential customers engaged means running regular drip campaigns and sending custom emails. So you’ll need automation tools and a team of at least two people to run them, a marketer and a copywriter. 

I need to stress that the scenario above represents the scaling stage where your business is effectively growing and higher cost is expected. In turn, your returns will be higher, and, looking at the grand scheme of things, it’s still inexpensive to grow email subscribers, hence your customer base. 

Finally, despite all the expenses, Invesp reports that nurtured leads spend 47% more than non-nurtured ones and respond to emails 4-10 times more.

And after a purchase? 

Sending loyalty program updates, exclusive offers, or even just a thank-you email can turn one-time buyers into loyal customers who keep coming back — and may even refer others. 

I know it may sound expensive, but these often fall into regular email marketing expenses. For instance, platforms include event-based campaign automation features on higher plans. And you get other marketing tools to manage campaigns better.

Testing ideas with minimal cost

Whether you’re introducing a new product, trying out a fresh email content format, or trying out a different promotional email marketing strategy, you can experiment without blowing the budget.

For instance, I can run a test campaign for a small segment of my contact list to gauge their response. Based on how they engage — whether they click, buy, offer feedback, or ignore — I’ll know if the idea is worth scaling up. 

It’s the same for testing different types of emails, content styles, or offers – A/B test different versions to see which resonates more. This way, you’re never putting too much at risk, but you’re still gathering valuable insights that can help refine the overall strategy.

Note: The A/B testing feature is included in some platforms’ plans starting from about $13, like Mailchimp, for example. With other platforms though, the feature may be reserved for higher plans.

Customers’ management advantages of email marketing

Customer segmentation

I split my email list into different segments based on demographics, interests, behavior, or where someone is in their customer journey. That way, I can send each group the messages that speak to them. This helps keep the target audience engaged and builds rapport and trust.

Take, for example, a customer who has just made a purchase. A follow-up thank-you email with product tips or related recommendations feels personalized and helpful. Meanwhile, someone new to your list might receive a series of welcome emails with educational content or a discount coupon to encourage their first purchase.

This targeted approach ensures that you’re not just blasting the same message to everyone. Instead, you deliver relevant and valuable content to each individual, making them feel understood and appreciated.

Direct and personalized communication

​​​​​​​​Personalized emails take it even further than segmentation, targetting your content to each recipient cohort. And the extra marketing efforts are worth it. 

Based on Experian Marketing Services and Campaign Monitor research, this approach may boost your open rates between 26% and 30%.

And the personalization includes referring to customer’s:

• Name
• Age
• Location
• Gender
• Date of birth, etc.

So in a segment of newly joined subscribers, you can make the welcome email more personal by using the recipients’ names or introducing special/seasonal offers for their country. 

Access to unique data

Track exactly how people interact with your messages. From open rates to click-throughs to specific content interactions; the data helps you understand what resonates with the audience, allowing for two critical things:

1. Targeted email marketing campaigns
2. Timely optimization of your digital marketing strategy

For instance, you get a lot of valuable insights from customers’ purchase behavior. Therefore, keep an eye on website traffic linked to your campaigns. That allows you to figure out which types of messaging lead to sales and which need tweaking. Knowing when people make purchases, what they buy, and what offers they respond best to helps fine-tune the strategies. 

You may notice that certain customers always respond well to seasonal discounts or regular email newsletter marketing. So, it makes sense to include them with similar offers in future campaigns to drive more sales.

“Owning” your audience

One of the things I love most about email marketing is the control you have over the audience’s attention. Plus, you truly own the infrastructure that supports lead nurturing and your overall marketing strategy.

This sounds cool, but let me put this into perspective for you. 

When someone subscribes to your email list, the email marketing infrastructure allows you to engage with them directly. Maybe even more so than with other forms of marketing. 

The trick is that you decide how and when to communicate with the subscribers. For example, the recipients see the feature or product launches, right when the product they’re interested in is available.

Whereas, with social media, there could be a lag before my followers see the offer or the hook. And sometimes, it may even happen that my offer doesn’t appear in their feed at all.

Re-engagement and win-back opportunities

Not every subscriber will stay active forever. But email gives you a great opportunity to bring those inactive subscribers back with win-back campaigns.

Identify and target those who haven’t interacted in a while with a gentle nudge — reminding them that you’re still here and offering something valuable. A simple email saying, “We miss you! Here’s 20% off your next purchase,” can be a powerful motivator to get them interested again, making them feel valued and encouraging them to reconnect.

Highlighting new product updates or recent improvements can spark renewed interest, too. Sometimes subscribers lose interest because nothing previously stood out to them, but a new product or service update could be exactly what they were looking for to come back on board.

Analytical and optimization email marketing benefits

Measurable results

Here’s the metrics I focus on, and you should too:

• Open rate
• Click-through rate
• Bounce rate
• Conversions
• Number of unsubscribes after getting an email

Open rates help figure out if your subject lines are attention-grabbing. If there’s a low open rate, it’s time to experiment with different subject lines or maybe change the times to send emails.

Sounds fairly simple, but it’s best to look at the data across different verticals to get a better idea of what a good result is and when you need to optimize. 

Per Tidio, 19-26% is the average open rate across different industries, with the highest rates being:

• 28.5% in education
• 27.3% in agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting
• 27.1% in financial services

The click-through rate (CTR), however, tells you how many people are interested enough to click the email links or calls to action. If the CTR isn’t great, it might mean the content isn’t hitting the mark, or the offers need a little more punch.

Again, Tidio found 2.3% to be the average CTR rate (which is in line with my experience), with the highest being:

• 4.4% in education
• 3.6% in real estate, design and construction 
• 3.4% in agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting

Now, let’s move to the bounce rates, spam complaints, and the conversion rate. 

If the bounce rate is high, you need to do some list cleaning — maybe the subscribers’ addresses are outdated or incorrect. And if you see spam complaints creeping up, that’s a red flag that you are sending too frequently, or your messages aren’t hitting the right tone for the audience.

The perfect bounce score is under 0.5%, and anything below 2% is acceptable. The danger zone is when the bounce rate gets close to ~10%, where you need to inspect your infrastructure more closely.

Also, the industry’s acceptable spam rate is under 0.1%. If you get higher scores, stop your campaigns to avoid being blacklisted and get to the bottom of the problem. 

Next, the conversion rate shows how many people actually followed through on your call to action. It’s a direct measure of whether your emails are leading to real actions that benefit the business.

The average email conversion rate is 0.07% across the industries, per Omnisend’s research, with the highest conversion rates being:

• 0.18% in games, arts & entertainment
• 0.18% in health & wellness
• 0.16% in food & drink
• 0.15% in antiques & collectibles

Finally, there’s the unsubscribe rate. If people are dropping off, consider whether your content is relevant or not, and again check (better yet, test) the sending frequency.  

Tidio reports that the average unsubscribe rate is 0.1-0.3%, while the highest are:

• 0.4% in wellness & fitness
• 0.3% in healthcare services
• 0.3% in logistics & wholesale
• 0.3% in agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting

Take all this data and compare it against your campaign’s performance. You’ll get a much better idea of where and how to optimize your emails for higher engagement. 

A/B testing and optimization

A/B testing can almost double our ROI (based on Litmus research) because you’ll use emails that hit your campaign goal, skipping the stage where you send a single email and hope for results.  

The beauty of it is how low-risk it is. Instead of making a huge change across an entire campaign, test it on a smaller sample first and then go with the winning version for everyone else. It saves you from wasting effort, yet it boosts engagement.

With A/B testing, try out different versions of an email — like testing subject lines, tweaking call-to-action (CTA) buttons, changing up the visuals, or even experimenting with the timing of when I send my message out. 

Of course, we need to test a single change at a time, or it would be hard to understand which change made an impact. For example, tweaking the subject line length in one test, and then changing the CTA button text or placement in another.

Feedback collection

Email marketing also makes it easy to gather direct feedback from customers. After someone makes a purchase, requests a service, or even just visits a site, send them a follow-up email asking for their thoughts. 

To that, you can even embed surveys or feedback forms directly into the email, making it convenient for the recipients to share their experiences.

Getting feedback quickly means you can make adjustments to email strategies on the fly or address any issues right away. 

Also, email feedback collection can be a great re-engagement strategy. For instance, reach out to inactive subscribers and ask if there’s anything I could do better or if there’s a reason they haven’t been engaging. 

Budget optimization

Most email marketing software options offer scalable pricing, which is awesome because it means I can grow my audience and send out email blasts without my costs growing out of control.

Audience targeting is another thing that makes email marketing great for budget optimization. Simply put, send campaigns only to people who are likely to be interested, which means you’ll be getting a higher return on investment. 

So my advice is to put resources toward the strategies and email types that get the best outcomes to ensure marketing dollars are being used as effectively as possible. 

It’s all about spending smarter, not more.

Automations and integrations advantages of email marketing

Event-based campaigns

Event-based campaigns are a way to boost sales by connecting with customers exactly at the right moment. These campaigns are triggered by specific customer actions, making the timing and context spot-on for engagement.

For example, when someone abandons their cart, you can automatically send a follow-up email as a gentle reminder to come back and finish their purchase. And, according to Klaviyo, the average open rate for an abandoned cart email is 50.5%!

But it doesn’t stop at abandoned carts. 

Emails are ideal for scenarios like sending welcome sequences, birthday discounts, exclusive occasion-based sales, or post-purchase thank-you messages.

Of course, automation plays a huge role here, and the integrations with e-commerce platforms allow you to seamlessly track actions like an abandoned cart or completed purchases, and then trigger marketing messages with relevant content. 

It means you can create a personalized email marketing experience that guides customers throughout their journey without manually managing each action.

Dynamic content

Dynamic content can make a big difference in engagement. In fact, according to Litmus emails that include dynamic content bring a 2x ROI to business owners!

Let me give you a bit of context and explanation so you can better understand why this tactic is so powerful.  

The content of each email adapts based on user behavior, preferences, and usage history, offering elements like personalized greetings, tailored product recommendations, or region-specific promotional emails. This way, the email feels genuinely relevant to each person, not just a generic blast, encouraging them to click and convert.

For instance, if someone has recently browsed landing pages or a particular category on my site, I’ll automatically send them an email that features similar items or offers a discount on related products.

And to make the best of this, I use integrations with CRM systems or website analytics tools. They help gather relevant data to feed the dynamic content and email marketing automation, ensuring each person gets the right content at the right time.

Hyperpersonalization

Hyperpersonalization is like personalization on a whole new level, using advanced data and AI to craft emails that feel uniquely tailored to each recipient. 

It’s about using real-time insights — like recent browsing behavior, favorite categories, or even specific style preferences — to create messages that feel one-of-a-kind.

For example, if a customer leaves items in their cart, instead of just sending a standard reminder, I can send an email featuring exactly what they left behind, sweetened with a personalized discount. 

Automation and integrations with AI-driven systems help gather and use this kind of detailed data. In turn, it’s easier to set up and manage hyperpersonalized campaigns.

Email localization

Email localization is more than just translating an email into a different language — it’s about tailoring everything to fit the local culture, context, and preferences of each subscriber’s region. 

Integrations with localization tools and region-based segmentation make this process more streamlined, automating the customization for each audience.

For example, if I’m running an international campaign, I might send out promotions timed around local holidays or big events for that specific region. 

It’s all about showing that you understand the individual and their cultural background. This way, the emails aren’t just personalized — they’re also relevant to the everyday life of a global audience, but targeted locally. 

Cross-channel integration

Email marketing can be like the glue that connects all marketing channels, be it social media marketing, website content, and even in-store promotions.

You can use emails to encourage subscribers to check out a social media contest or join a loyalty program. Or you could share links to new blog posts or promote an in-store event. 

Again, automation tools and integrations simplify pulling data from other platforms, so you can schedule cross-channel email marketing campaigns. 

Whether someone starts by engaging with a social post and then receives an email follow-up or visits a website and gets a personalized email later. It’s all connected, making their journey feel seamless through brand recognition and driving them closer to conversion.

As a side benefit, cross-channel integration is a great way to drive traffic across different platforms while keeping the messaging consistent across every touchpoint.

Key challenges and drawbacks of email marketing

Email deliverability

The rather tricky part of email marketing is making sure emails reach the subscribers’ inboxes. 

No matter how great the content is, if it ends up in the spam folder, it’s not doing much good for your email sender reputation. 

There are two main reasons why emails might get flagged as spam. The first is frequency and relevance. If I send too many emails or they aren’t relevant, people can get annoyed and either unsubscribe or, worse, mark my emails as spam.

The second reason is triggering spam filters. Email clients like Gmail or Outlook use filters that catch anything that looks suspicious. If I use overly promotional language or the formatting looks off, the email might get flagged.

The potential solutions are as follows:

1. Send emails at a reasonable frequency. In a lot of cases, one or two emails per week is more than enough. 
2. Avoid using words and phrases that might sound spammy in the subject line.
3. Always monitor email performance. Poor open and click-through rates are the first telltale sign. Also, keep a close eye on unsubscribes. 
4. Make sure the content is valuable and relevant. Use A/B tests to determine which type of content relates to which audience cohort. 

Legal compliance

Most countries have strict spam laws, but they’re not all the same, which means you need to be aware of the rules in every country. Should you slip up, it could translate to heavy fines or even getting your emails banned.

Here’s a quick overview of different spam laws:

• In the EU, the GDPR requires explicit consent from people before sending marketing emails, and it also puts a big emphasis on data privacy
• In the US, the CAN-SPAM Act requires senders to provide an easy way for people to opt-out. Also, there’s a strong focus on senders’ information accuracy.
• Canada has its own rules under CASL, which are all about getting clear consent and keeping records of it.

To stay compliant, check the following best practices:

1. Have explicit consent from everyone on the list.
2. Include a clear, easy-to-use unsubscribe link in every email, so people can opt out whenever they want without any hassle. 
3. Keep accurate records of when and how each subscriber gave their consent, just in case it needs to be proved.
4. Make sure to follow the specific regulations that apply to each subscriber’s country.

It can be a lot to keep track of, but email marketing compliance isn’t just about avoiding fines — it’s about respecting the audience and building trust.

Wrapping up

Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools for any marketer, offering high ROI, low costs, and valuable customer insights. It allows me to deliver valuable, personalized content directly to my audience while easily tracking and optimizing campaigns. 

The best part? It keeps my brand top of mind, building long-term relationships and driving real results.

Whether you’re just starting or refining your strategy, focus on delivering value, keeping content relevant and engaging, and watch your ROI grow. Your next email campaign could be your best yet!