Email marketing in the era of the empowered consumer

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to clarify why, when and how e-mail marketing can be used to empower consumers and to give ideas for future scholarly research. Design/methodology/approach Systematic literature review studies 41 e-mail marketing and 54 consumer empowerment articles published in variety of academic journals between 1998 and 2014. Findings E-mail allows an active, interactive and personalized communication fulfilling the preferences of an empowered consumer. E-mail marketing can be used to empower consumers by sending e-mails based on permission, by making consumers active participants in the communication process and by making e-mails relevant for the recipients. However, current e-mail marketing strategies need to be updated to get the maximum benefit out of the channel. Research limitations/implications The limitation of the study is the broad domain of research, which hampered the in-depth analysis. However, the study was able to synthesize the scattered literature and create an overall picture of the topic as planned. Practical implications The paper encourages managers to use empowering e-mail marketing strategies and presents several suggestions for future e-mail marketing research. Originality/value The paper uses a new perspective, consumer empowerment as a lens for understanding e-mail marketing. Because e-mail marketing is currently very popular among marketers but is threatened by its negative image among consumers, it is important to understand how e-mail marketing can be developed so that it can also survive in the future.