Yes, I meant what I said in the headline. And I say that with confidence, not arrogance, after being in email marketing for 25 years and watching company after company, vertical after vertical, falling somewhere on the spectrum of email investment.
On one end, companies invested significant time and money in email; on the other, they stumbled into it without that same investment.
But I’m seeing a pullback of resources from digital marketing, which has been the historically winning solution. The cornerstone of that solution is email marketing.
This is not a widespread move yet, but I see more companies taking their eyes off the ball, and I am concerned. For example, the number of companies using all-image emails has increased dramatically this year. That points to production shortfalls and a lack of data-informed messaging.
We certainly had our eye on the ball at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and in the years immediately following. We could see that email marketing was our saving grace. But now, it’s as if we have developed weak knees.
Companies are backing off from investing in that sure thing and going after the shiny new toys, according to recent reports. Again, we are putting time and money into new, unproven areas.
This will affect sales and revenue and hurt the downstream effect of email marketing — capturing customers’ data and using it to market to them in highly relevant and convertible ways.
Much of this goes back to the conversation I began in my previous MarTech column, “How to gear up email for a strong finish to 2024,” in which I gave several tactics for increasing or at least preserving, budget for 2025 email marketing programs.
I’ll continue that conversation here with advice for helping you stem the tide of permanent email cutbacks and rethink ways to make email even more valuable — and, I hope, more reduction-proof — in 2025.
Companies are spending less on marketing overall, according to Gartner’s 2024 global CMO survey. The average marketing budget is 7.7% of total revenue, down from a high of 11% in 2020 and 9.1% in 2023. That is disappointing but not a surprise, given that companies pulled way back on marketing as the pandemic took hold but bounced back to 9.5% in 2022.
What’s more troubling is what companies are spending their money on. Paid media investment in search, social media and digital display advertising is soaring, along with offline spending on event and influencer marketing and TV — all at the expense of marketing technology, human resources and agencies.
To those CMOs who have ceded control over martech to IT and other departments and who have rerouted budget away from email, I ask, “Why are you spending so much money in media if the result is that the customer comes to your website, but you’re not able to capture their intent and convert on it?”
As a decades-long survivor of the brutal budget-making process and now as an adviser and counselor to companies, this makes no sense to me. When my agency audits clients — big and small, Fortune 50 to Fortune 1000 — the first thing we look at is their foundational elements of email, which are acquisition, promotion, attrition and automation.
You need those four building blocks to have a strong email program and we always find them to be insufficient. You could be the most advanced marketer on the planet and I could still find ways to make more money and drive more response by applying best practices and the latest technologies and strategies aligned to a data-informed program.
We usually find that companies are driving a lot of traffic, but the engagement ends there. We’re not focusing on the fundamentals of email, which is the top ROI channel for most companies. It’s as if we regressed to the early 2000s when we were all about the number of eyeballs, list size and impressions. Why are we going back when we know it doesn’t work?
Avoid heavy paid media ad spending that offers little opportunity to capture a significant number of motivated people when they come to your websites or engage with you in other channels.
Dig deeper: Email marketing strategy: A marketer’s guide
2. Doubling revenue must include investment in marketing automation
Marketing automation — which includes journeys, triggers and transactional email messages — has always performed better than promotional messages. Transactional messages in a well-run email program might represent 4% of the overall email volume but deliver at least 50% or more of your email revenue.
If you’re the CMO or VP of marketing, ask whether your transactional programs come close to that standard. If not, you have work to do. If you’re close, consider this a benchmark that could lead to more investment because you hold the keys to the kingdom.
Promotional email is great, but the ones that land are hyper-focused emails you have thought through with your strategic vision and approach. Plus, you’re marketing to people who already have their wallets out, which is highly effective.
As you look at your upside, consider how your transactional programs are working to gauge your email effectiveness and where you could begin to increase email revenue. I don’t mean you should focus only on those at the expense of your promotional emails.
Instead, approach strategy and tactics from a holistic standpoint. But the headline on this column doesn’t say, “Do all these things and make money.” It says, “If I could double your email revenue, would you listen to me?”
Dig deeper: The email marketer’s guide to effective marketing automation
3. Hire an email accelerant
Not every digital marketing agency understands email, trust me, I know. But when you want to increase your email revenue or even double it, you typically can’t do it alone unless you have a large rockstar team well-invested in email and has the time to devote to it exclusively. Here’s why.
You need to develop a strategy before you figure out tactics. Are you up for that? If not, bring in someone who knows email-specific strategies, can review your email numbers and customers, knows email revenue, knows how it performs and how consumers react and can accelerate your plans 10 times or more.
Speed to market is important, and so is increasing revenue. But you need help and it won’t happen if you or the agency you work with now think the solution is just to send another email. A focused approach will get results faster.
Dig deeper: Email automation tools for the savvy marketer
4. Invest in your email budget
Roll your eyes all you want, but I never promised that you could double your email revenue for free. As I mentioned in my previous MarTech article, email budgets have always been constrained. Email might be at the top of the ROI chain, but it isn’t invested in at the same rate.
Oh, sure. You can send a bad email and still make money. Why take money from some fun place, like influencer marketing and add it to something that works well enough without it?
Well, smart CMO, what would happen to your email revenue if you did invest? I’ve never met a CMO who thought they made enough money. An obsession with mediocrity — knowing you can get by without spending money — gets us to a level playing field that defies reality. Instead, invest in the program at the top of your ROI instead of being happy with just doing okay.
By the way, whatever your number is in your email budget is not enough. I’ve rarely worked in a program where it’s flush with budget dollars.
Dig deeper: How to produce brand-approved email designs on time and on budget
Wrapping up
This isn’t just another post-summer, pre-holiday rant. I recently participated in a webinar with five brilliant email experts, during which we discussed the history of the email space and the budget and attention investments they require from both email marketers and their executives.
We know email marketers know the upsides of investing. The executive level diminishes the value of email through a lack of investment.
My final tip to you: Instead of once again chasing the shiny toys that increase traffic (maybe) without capturing intent (definitely), invest in the channel that dominates ROI.
If you’re a marketing team leader or CMO, ask your email people what they would do with an extra investment. I guarantee they will find a way, and it will help you double your email investment.
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