The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
I originally made this case back in January 2018, and it’s hard to believe that’s almost four years ago now. So much has happened since: the evolution of website platforms like Squarespace, Shopify, and Square/Weebly into full-blown digital operations hubs, the start of serious antitrust proceedings against Google and Facebook, and of course, a global pandemic.
But if anything, the case for historically search-oriented agencies to add or expand their email marketing offerings has only strengthened. Email remains an under-appreciated and under-addressed channel among digital agencies of all stripes, even as “social media management” seems to have become an almost table-stakes-level offering.
Some of that prioritization of social media is understandable — social remains very much in-demand among small businesses[1]. And yet, visibility and engagement for organic social media[2] remains flat on Facebook and Twitter, and has started to decline on Instagram.
Meanwhile, email open and engagement rates have actually surged across many industries[3] in the COVID era, and not just in the earliest days of the pandemic[4].
As the saying goes, there’s no time like the present to start an email offering. I hope I’ll convince you that email should be a natural and profitable complement to SEO[5], SEM, and SMM. And if you’re a local business reading this post, I hope many of these points convince you to take a look at email marketing yourselves!
Making the case for email
High ROI
With a return on investment (ROI) of 36:1[6], marketers consistently rate email as the top-performing channel. That’s down from 42:1 in 2019[7]