What do email marketing and rock n’ roll have in common? Probably more than you imagine.Let’s start with some history. Email has been around since [Ray Tomlinson](https://movableink.com/blog/remembering-ray-tomlinson-the-reason-email-is-where-its/) sent the first person-to-person message back in 1971. Seven years later, a visionary named [Gary Thuerk](https://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/email-communications-strategy/email-marketing-evolution/) sent the first mass-marketing email to several hundred Arpanet users– which, amazingly, resulted in $13 million in orders for his employer, the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).Rock n’ roll is synonymous with the guitar, which can be traced back 4,000 years. But the first _electric_ guitar wasn’t perfected until 1931, [by Adolph Rickenbacker and George Beauchamp](https://gizmodo.com/how-the-electric-guitar-was-invented-1453939129). It was used initially by Hawaiian and jazz musicians – and two decades later it got into the hands of rock ‘n roll’s pioneers. Rickenbacker and Beauchamp probably didn’t expect to change the world, but they did. Ditto Tomlinson and Thuerk. But today – 40 years after that first commercial email message – email is a dominant power player, with some [300 billion emails](https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2018/03/shocking-truth-about-how-many-emails-sent/) being sent every day.Like rock ‘n roll, which lives on to this day, email marketing keeps on making a big, exciting noise. And here are six reasons why that’s likely to be the case for a long time to come.**1\. Email marketing is affordable **“It’s relatively inexpensive to start and maintain email marketing campaigns,” writes Keran Smith on the [Lyfe Marketing blog](https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/importance-email-marketing/). “Tactics like segmentation and triggered campaigns help you get the most for your money, allowing you to grow your business without pouring all of your revenue back into digital marketing.**”** His bottom line: “Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective digital marketing strategies that you can use to reach and engage your target audience.”**2\. Email marketing has an extraordinary ROI **“Email marketing is the king of the marketing kingdom with a 4400% ROI and $44 for every $1 spent,” reports [Campaign Monitor](https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2016/01/70-email-marketing-stats-you-need-to-know/). There’s simply no other marketing investment that can beat that return. And [eMarketer](https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Many-Marketers-Email-Still-King/1016393), reporting on a study undertaken last year, indicates that the ROI trendline is heading in the right direction. According to the study, “73% of in-house marketers worldwide said that email marketing provided a strong ROI in 2017, making it the marketing tactic that received the highest percentage of responses in the survey, even slightly in front of SEO. Back in 2008, SEO ranked higher than email.”**3\. Email is bigger than social media (in terms of users) **Joe Kindness, writing on the [Agency Analytics blog](https://agencyanalytics.com/blog/social-media-vs-email-marketing), cites a study showing there were anticipated to be more than 3.7 billion email users by the end of last year. And social media? “Facebook, which is far and away the most popular social media platform, sees ‘only’ 1.9 billion unique visitors every month,” he reports. “Two of the other most popular networks, Instagram and Twitter, have 600 million and 317 million visitors every month, respectively.”**4\. …and email is better than social media (in terms of reach) **Kindness explains that even if a marketer has an equal number email and social media subscribers, odds are very good that only the marketer’s email messages will be seen. “Why is this? It has to do with social media algorithms,” he writes. “Users don’t see every single post, tweet, and pin from the people and businesses they follow, because there are simply too many updates to fit on an average news feed. On Facebook, for instance, you can only count on about 6% of your fan base seeing anything you post, according to [Social Ogilvy](https://social.ogilvy.com/facebook-zero-considering-life-after-the-demise-of-organic-reach/).”**5\. Email marketing does personalization incredibly well **“Brands are using creative and diversified email personalization methods to increase brand engagement, foster customer loyalty, and, ultimately, work to please that 75 % of consumers that are more likely to buy from a brand that personalizes messages,” reports [Campaign Monitor](https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2017/12/8-brands-using-email-personalization-like-pros/).While personalization used to mean seeing your name in the subject line, it’s now much more than that**.** “Personalization includes an array of awesome, data-driven techniques that bring in substantial ROI. These techniques include making recommendations based on past purchases, using dynamic content to fit consumer preferences, showing an understanding of purchasing history, and taking advantage of data to promote compelling offers.”Check out [The Ultimate Email Marketing Personalization Checklist](https://movableink.com/blog/infographic-the-ultimate-email-marketing-personalization-checklist/) for much more!6. **Email marketing has unrivaled cross-generational appeal **“Across generations, there is a clear preference to receive communications from companies by email,” writes Kelsey Bernius at [SendGrid](https://sendgrid.com/blog/email-an-essential-channel-across-generations/), citing a survey that asked thousands of email users of different ages about how they use it and their perception of it as a communication channel. “Your emails are crucial for reaching and engaging with your audience – and this trend can be expected to continue,” Bernius writes. “Email should be the foundation of your marketing efforts.”Rock on, email!
Six Reasons Email Marketing Still Rocks (And Will Keep on Rocking!)
