It’s been around 50 years; email marketing has been an inevitable part of the marketing medium. It was all started by a person named Ray Tomlinson, who sent the first email in 1971.
And from then, it was the start of a revolution in the marketing platform.
And with the passing time, this form of marketing has continuously updated itself to be a part of the change.
And now, there is no looking back. E-mail marketing has not only evolved itself but it has made each medium progress, not only technologies but also humans.
In the current scenario, if you are lacking social media skills including e-mails, then you are lacking in many things.
The 'Father of Spam' Gary Thuerk was a Marketing Manager at Digital Equipment Corp who was the beginner of the activity for the business email by dispatching the first mass emails.
In 1978
They further sent an email promoting a DEC machine to around 400 users. From the very beginning, email established itself as one of the most effective channels for marketing directly.
In 1991
The revolution of the Internet changed many things about how everyone would live, work and play. It not only changed the marketing pattern but also became one of the reasons to change the lifestyles of every household.
It became a completely new area to explore and experiment with.
Some experiments worked and got success and some couldn’t exist themselves.
When Hotmail was launched, it was the first free web email service.
It gave marketers a whole new prospect to reach their customers as well as to connect with audiences.
In the 1990s,
Even after these evolutions in the internet medium, there were very few people or customers to access it.
At that time, the population was completely divided into categories. The major categories were – Rich people and middle-class people.
The urban people were able to access the internet and marketers were able to target them. But other consumers were still out of their reach.
B2C and B2B marketing was done by post or the telephone, and both methods were very expensive those days.
Also, till that time, there were no strict guidelines under e-mail marketing and that turned out to be spamming messages.
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In 1998 the Data Protection Act updated.
Also in 2003,
The Can-Spam Law was introduced in the US.
The volume of marketing emails being delivered started to rise gradually.
By 2004,
AOL started collecting recipient feedback from some email service providers, with Hotmail, Yahoo, and a few more introduced recipient feedback schemes thereafter.
This was the start of the grantee-focused strategy which was a complete anti-spam that has been followed till the date.
In 2009
During this time, everything was changing and growing within no time.
The marketers wanted their emails delivered, opened, and read. They wanted to track the behavior of the audiences and potential customers.
Marketers realized they need to look after their email reputation and keep an eye on the conversion rates coming through the email.
The answer was to make emails both timely and relevant through the implementation of triggered email reacting to online user behavior. The first-ever behavioral email was sent in 2001. By 2010 it was reported 48% of online marketers were using triggered emails.
In addition to the changes forced upon email marketers by industry rules and regulations, the change in social culture also played an integral part in how email marketing has evolved.
Creativity suddenly started to matter for very different reasons than it had 10 years ago.
By this time, social media also started making an extreme impact on the audience and this all gave a new angle to email marketing.
FaceBook launched worldwide in 2006.
By 2008,
the site had over 100,000 business pages, giving recognition to multiple companies, large businesses to small startups, and companies were aggressively working to attract their potential customers. In the past few years, the importance of media has drastically changed and this is why most marketers position their email channels.
Now, the scenario is that people are more active and dependent on these sites and they prefer to get in touch with direct sellers. Also, this gives a face-to-face conversation if sellers keep their customers' views at first.
Last year the DMA reported that around 70% of marketers think that email is an amazing platform for creating loyal and active customers. Also, it makes things easier to keep in touch with potential customers.
At this stage, marketing automation systems are enabling advanced segmentation and allowing multiple companies to send extremely focused email communication. Also, multiple formats evolved for every particular niche which simply helps the new bees to form a mail-in proper format.
Wrapping Words
This was an overview of how E-mail marketing has evolved these years and still stands strong alone. It will not be wrong if we state email marketing as a foundation of online direct marketing. Moreover, it is one of the most successful marketing strategies till now.
We hope this article has helped you to gain some knowledge on direct marketing through e-mail and this will help you in evolving your business as well.
Till then, don’t forget to share this piece of knowledge with everyone.
