The quick answer is yes. It remains as effective today as it was twenty years ago, perhaps even more so.

What’s this? The antiquated ramblings of a Gen Xer, out of touch with the current ‘way of things’? Perhaps, but trust me on this one – in a world where we have multiple ways of connecting with our target audience, the humble email can out-muscle them all (or at least, it can if done properly. More on that in a bit).

Quite simply: Email marketing costs little but can deliver a lot. 

Email Marketing David Beckham Meme image

Let’s kick off with some stats:

Email marketing statista image

Why is email marketing effective?

Email marketing's power lies in its personal nature, landing directly in your target customer’s inbox. While social media advertising might reach a broader audience, email marketing allows companies to send personalised messages to people who have already expressed an interest in their products or services.

Another feather in email’s cap is its tried-and-tested role in business comms. Despite the rise of platforms such as LinkedIn or messaging apps like WhatsApp, email remains the primary method of professional communication. Most people check their email multiple times throughout the day, meaning you’re already reaching out to an engaged audience.

Email also enjoys total independence from third-party algorithms. While Google and social media platforms are constantly shifting the goalposts and reducing organic reach, the fundamentals of email marketing remain largely unchanged. Unlike paid advertising, which requires constant investment to maintain visibility, email marketing is cheap as chips and the ROI is pretty impressive. This makes it incredibly valuable for small and medium-sized companies working with limited budgets.

"Email marketing has been consistently pushed down the marketing agenda as each few years a new shiny thing comes along. The reality is that despite mobile, apps, social and everything else that's come our way for two decades or more, we still use email just as much as ever, if not more! Any travel company not being clever with the email marketing is really missing a trick and most likely paying over the odds to get repeat bookers through other channels."

Andy Headington

CEO of Adido

When is the best time to send a marketing email?

Timing is important when it comes to email marketing, but defining the ‘perfect’ moment to send an email is more tricky. Ask Google for the best time and you'll get a swathe of conflicting answers, proving there's no universal sweet spot. And from our own experiences, click through rates and even open rates can vary a lot depending on the quality of the content you’re sending out (why not sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of this very page to see what you’re missing out on?).

Generally, for e-commerce sites in particular, it’s more about hitting inboxes at the right point in the buyer journey. Take travel, for instance. To ensure user search intent is identified effectively, travel marketers need to understand the different stages of the decision-making process, which Google refers to as Micro Moments. This is when people turn to search engines to find an answer to a query, discover something new or buy a product. These moments are important because it is then that people form opinions and make decisions. Typically, booking a holiday isn’t an instantaneous thing – buyers will go through a number of stages, which tend to look like this:

Moments image

Below is an example of how emails can be utilised for those ‘dreaming moments’, courtesy of Travel Counsellors, a UK travel retailer:

Travel Counsellors email marketing image

One of Travel Counsellors’ leading agents, Eve Moir, gave me her view on why email marketing is still such a powerful tool:

“Email marketing keeps me in clients’ minds, so if they’ve not been away for a while or haven’t booked anything for a while, it reminds them about me and I’ll often get a response along the lines of ‘we were just thinking about holidays and you emailed us! We’d like to do XYZ, can we have a chat?’. It just kickstarts a conversation, a lead, an enquiry - and I take it from there!”

Eve Moir

Travel Counsellor

How to check competitors' email marketing

Taking the time to view and analyse your competitors' email strategies can uncover valuable insights for your own campaigns. The key is to identify what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong.

Start by creating a dedicated email account specifically for competitive research. Sign up for your competitors' mailing lists, newsletters and promotional content. When examining their emails, pay attention to the following:

  • Look at their email templates and designs - are they user-friendly or bland and unappealing? Do they have a good balance of imagery and text?
  • Is their tone of voice, structure and writing style engaging? What type of language they use to connect with subscribers?
  • Analyse their CTAs noting both positioning and wording. Are they using buttons or text links? How often do they repeat their CTAs?
  • Track their sending patterns, including frequency, timing and how they approach different types of campaigns from promotional to transactional emails.

Competitor analysis isn't about copying what others do - it's about understanding industry practices and finding ways to stand out from the crowd. Look for gaps in your competitor’s approach that you can fill with your unique brand messaging.

Our top tips for email marketing

  • Personalisation is key. You wouldn’t believe the amount of marketing emails I get that don’t address me directly. Emails should connect with the individual and their preferences to make them sit up and take notice.
  • Segment Your subscribers. Group them together based on their interests and behaviour so you can send them more relevant content.
  • Make it different! Does anyone want to read a bland, AI-written block of text? Of course not. Go for funny, lively, controversial, emotive, silly…whatever suits you and your audience best.
  • Edit any AI content. If you’re using AI to write your emails, be sure to redraft it carefully so it matches your brand tone. Avoid AI buzzwords like ‘elevate’ and ‘leverage’ in your subject titles – these scream AI and your emails should scream you.
  • Don’t go straight for the jugular. While the ultimate goal of email marketing is to grow your business, it’s important to establish and nurture healthy relationships with your customers.
  • Offer an incentive. This could be a discount, download or some insights not available elsewhere:
Newsletter offer image

(from our own newsletter 😊)

Some proof in the email pudding

Many of our clients do send emails regularly which is great for them. It helps to do some or all of the things that we talked about above. But one of our recent clients thought that email wasn’t ‘really for them’. They had an exclusive client base and decided it was a better marketing tactic to spend on paid media in both search and social to find travel bookings rather than go back to existing clients who’d already booked. Eventually, after several months of increasing encouragement from our team, the client did start to send emails again and, well, the bookings followed! Rather than spend hundreds of pounds per lead, let alone sale using paid media, the client saw near instant and continued return on their email activity, bringing in tens of thousands of pounds as this slide from a talk we did with Advantage highlights!

Advantage email example image

Enjoyed this article? Sign up to our newsletter

We jumped off the email marketing bandwagon a while ago but now we’re firmly back on, bringing you a monthly newsletter full of top notch insights, stats, special offers and hopefully something to put a smile on your face. Fill in the form below to sign up!

Back to blog
Meet the author ...

Anna Heathcote

Content Manager

Based way up on the Northumbrian coast, Anna uses her creative copywriting expertise and SEO experience to ensure clients have fresh, relevant and optimised content on their ...