In 1978 — seven years after the first email was sent — a company called Digital Equipment Corporation sent a marketing message to 400 people on ARPANET. It generated $13 million in sales. The first email marketing campaign in history had an ROI that most paid media managers today would frame and hang on their wall.
That was 47 years ago. Since then, email has been declared dead roughly every three years by someone selling something newer. Social media was going to kill it. Slack was going to kill it. Push notifications, SMS, TikTok. Here we are. Email is very much alive — and by most measures, still the most reliable channel in the marketing stack.
This is the article that explains why, and what most businesses are consistently getting wrong about it.
The Numbers, Because They're Hard to Ignore
The average return on email marketing investment sits between $36 and $42 for every dollar spent, depending on the study. No other channel — not paid social, not display, not even well-run Google Ads campaigns — reliably comes close to that as an average.
About 60% of consumers say they prefer to receive promotional content from brands via email rather than social media. Roughly 59% say email influences their purchasing decisions. Those two stats together should give anyone pause about where they're focusing their marketing effort.
The engagement picture backs it up. A well-segmented list from a business that sends relevant, consistent content will outperform a social media following of the same size almost every time — because you own the list, no algorithm controls who sees it, and your audience opted in on purpose.
Why Email Gets Underestimated
The disconnect between email's performance and its reputation is genuinely interesting. Part of it is experiential — most people receive a lot of bad email and extrapolate from their own inbox that email marketing must not work. What they're really experiencing is bad email marketing, which is a different thing entirely.
Bad email marketing: a newsletter that arrives every Monday regardless of whether there's anything worth saying, promotional blasts that make no attempt at personalization, subject lines nobody tested, a list that hasn't been cleaned in three years.
Good email marketing: a message that arrives because you have something specific to say to a specific segment, a subject line that earns the open rather than tricks it, content that delivers real value before it asks for anything, and a single clear next step.
The channel isn't the problem. The strategy is.
The Myths Worth Dismantling
Myth: Our open rates are too low for email to be worth it. Average open rates vary by industry — B2B tends to run 20–30%, e-commerce often lower. If yours are below average, that's a solvable problem: list hygiene, better subject lines, better segmentation. But below average doesn't mean not worth doing. A 15% open rate on a list of 5,000 people is 750 humans reading your message every single send. What does it cost to reach 750 relevant people on paid social?
Myth: People don't read emails anymore. Some people don't read your emails. Open and click rates across the industry have remained remarkably stable for years. What's changed is the bar for sending something worth reading — which is higher than it was in 2012. That's not a reason to stop. It's a reason to send better email.
Myth: We just need to grow our list. List size matters far less than list quality and email quality. A list of 2,000 people who signed up because they genuinely wanted what you offer will outperform a list of 20,000 collected through a generic lead magnet almost every time. The goal isn't subscribers — it's the right subscribers, receiving the right message, at the right time.
Myth: Email is only for e-commerce. Some of the most effective email marketing we've seen comes from service businesses — agencies, consultancies, contractors. The channel works anywhere the relationship matters, and in service businesses, the relationship is everything. A monthly email that demonstrates expertise and keeps you top of mind is worth far more than most paid campaigns when trust is what drives the sale.
What Actually Works in 2025
Welcome sequences that earn trust immediately. The moment someone joins your list is the moment of highest interest and attention. A well-written welcome sequence — 3–5 emails over the first two weeks — sets expectations, delivers immediate value, and makes a real connection before you ever ask for anything. Most businesses send one generic thanks for subscribing email and call it done. That's a missed opportunity every single time.
Segmentation based on behavior, not just demographics. Not everyone on your list is at the same stage of their relationship with your brand. Someone who's visited your pricing page twice this week should receive different email than someone who signed up six months ago and hasn't clicked anything since. Most email platforms make this easier than it's ever been. The question is whether you're using those tools.
Subject lines that sound like a person wrote them. The subject line is the only thing standing between your email and the trash folder. It needs to earn the open — not by being sensational, but by being relevant and human. A quick thought on your Q4 plan will outperform UNLOCK YOUR BUSINESS POTENTIAL TODAY almost every time.
Plain text that reads like a letter, not a brochure. Heavily designed HTML emails can work in e-commerce. For most service businesses and B2B, a well-written near-plain-text email that reads like it came from a real person consistently outperforms the beautifully designed template. The design signals mass communication. The plain text signals I'm talking specifically to you.
One call to action per email. Every email should want one thing from the reader. Not five things — one. Read this article. Book a call. Reply with your question. Claim this offer. When you give people multiple directions, they tend to pick none of them.
How to Know If Your Email Program Is Healthy
Track these consistently: open rate against your industry benchmark, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate per send (over 0.5% is a warning sign), and revenue or leads attributed to email — the number that actually matters.
Beyond the numbers: are people replying? Are they forwarding to colleagues? Are new clients mentioning your emails in their first sales conversation? Those qualitative signals matter as much as the metrics — maybe more. They're the evidence that your emails are building something, not just filling inboxes.
The Honest Case for Getting This Right
Here's what makes email genuinely different from most marketing channels: it's a direct line to someone who raised their hand and said they want to hear from you. That's an extraordinary thing to have — a direct, owned, algorithm-independent relationship with people interested in what you do.
Most businesses treat this like an afterthought. The ones that don't have a compounding advantage that's very hard to replicate with any amount of paid spend. Your list is an asset. Build it like one.
