The level of IT spending in South Africa is forecast to increase in 2025 at a higher pace than the economy did in 2020. Although the general state of the economy has a direct impact on the growth of the ICT sector, its customers continue to invest in technology, and the sector consistently shows a growth rate that is higher than GDP. 

Cybersecurity is a high priority, with global statistics indicating that South Africa is the third most targeted country in the world for cyberattacks. Alleged IT-related procurement irregularities revealed through a number of commissions of inquiry and investigations continue to affect the reputation of some industry players. It is estimated that there are over 13,000 IT companies and over 3,000 electronics companies in South Africa, with the vast majority being small companies employing less than 50 people, according to Globe-News Wire.

Why Work With a South African IT Company

New and growing trends will provide significant opportunities for small and large players in the sector. These include growth in telecommunications, data center revenues and artificial intelligence, and the internet of things, where start-ups are expected to lead innovation. Digital transformation to improve customer experiences and online purchasing, fintech banking, blockchain, augmented reality, and virtual reality are some of the technologies that will disrupt the South African ICT industry in 2019. Improvements continue in 2025, with more than 120 million cellular mobile connections equal to 193% of the total population. 

The industry is characterized by consolidation and convergence of companies within the IT sector, and between companies in the IT and telecommunications sectors.

What You Should Be Aware of When Working With South-African IT Companies

The growth projections of the IT market could be higher were it not for certain factors that seem to constrain it, including the cost sensitivity of customers, low expenditure by the public sector, market maturity, and bigger companies sourcing directly from the original equipment manufacturers. 

 IT market growth is also impeded by bigger companies that bypass IT vendors and go directly to OEMs for products and services. This impacts negatively on smaller companies that provide niche services within the broader IT sector. 

How Reliable Are South African IT Companies

Despite the challenges facing the IT sector, its products and services have become part and parcel of everyday business and social life. The fast pace of innovation helps the sector to remain relevant while shaping the future of business and society. 

How Does the South-African IT Industry Relate to the Neighboring Countries?

The South African IT market, comprising hardware, packaged software, and IT services submarkets, is regarded as one of the most developed and sophisticated within the continent. South African IT companies rank among world leaders in areas such as mobile software, electronic banking services, pre-payment, revenue management, fraud prevention systems, and the manufacture of set-top boxes, according to a report provided by the South African Department of Communications. 

Email Marketing is a digital marketing strategy used by businesses to connect with their prospects/clients and promote their services or products via emails.

Email is actually older than the Internet and was invented in the early 70s, it’s still one of the most widely used forms of communication on the web, especially for business purposes.

A significant number of businesses rely on email marketing to increase their revenue, as it’s an efficient channel when it comes to lead and sales generation. 27% of IT companies surveyed by TechBehemoths mentioned that email marketing is one of their top marketing strategies.

Here are some of the benefits of email marketing for businesses:

• Increases your brand awareness
• Generates leads and sales
• Has a higher conversion rate
• Builds brand loyalty
• Is a great channel for upselling
• Delivers personalized content and messages
• Generates results fast

There are multiple email marketing tools on the market for self service advertising like Mailchimp, Hubspot, Zoho campaigns. They include a wide set of advanced features like automation, segmentation, email templates, ecommerce options, A/B testing, etc.

However, for a more holistic approach and scalable results with email marketing, you might want to get help from service providers who have proven expertise and advanced knowledge/techniques.

If you’re considering hiring an email marketing agency, here are some things to look for:  

• Experience
• Location
• Team size
• Price range
• Portfolio
• Approach & techniques
• Communication & reporting
• Customer reviews

You can choose from more than 8,000 email marketing service providers on TechBehemoths. To ease the selection process, we’ve created a powerful filter to help you narrow down the list of companies based on your exact project requirements.

Browse the company profiles you think are a good fit and contact them for possible collaborations.

Is email marketing still an effective strategy?

Yes, email marketing is still one of the most effective and popular types of digital marketing.

Email marketing means sending informative, promotional or commercial emails to a target group of potential customers.

Here are some common use cases for email marketing. Business usually send emails on these occasions:

• launch a new product/service

• refresh your website

• thank you note, confirmation message, or notification

• host an event

• have new offers

Emails are also a direct channel of communication with customers, which allows businesses to increase their brand awareness and build stronger relationships with their customers.

Below are a few common types of email marketing:

What essential skills should email marketers have?

When looking to hire an email marketing agency, keep in mind the following required skills:

1. Strategy Development & Planification

Email marketing must be based on a strategy and plan. You need to understand the various subscriber life-cycle stages and how to engage them as part of your strategic thinking. A successful email marketer should know what campaigns work well for every stage.

2. Automation

One of the best things you can do to save time and increase your email campaigns' ROI is to automate lead nurturing processes. Email marketing automation includes both lead nurturing and lifecycle emails. Here’s what each means:

• Lead nurturing - implies sending emails to try to convert potential customers

• Lifecycle emails - imply sending highly relevant emails at the right time, based on the buyer’s sales journey stage (lead, new customer, existing customer, etc.) 

3. Segmentation

Email segmentation is a technique that categorizes your contacts into different groups in order to deliver targeted and personalized emails.

Here are a few examples of user segments based on who they are or what they did:

• Customers

• Followers

• Downloaders

• Free trial users

You can segment your email lists based on other fields like:

• Demographical data: gender, age, job, income, marital status, etc.

• Geographical data: country, city, language, etc.

• Activity data: previous purchase, website browsing, engagement, etc.

Here is how email list segmentation can help you achieve better results:

4. Copywriting

Email copywriting is the process of writing content for an email that is intended to convince a user to do a specific action: visit a web page, download a resource, buy a product, etc.

Email copywriting principles are similar to any other type of copywriting and is meant to encourage some of the following actions:

• Share or link to a web page

• Read your new article

• Follow your social media

• Book a meeting

• Invite to a podcast

Great email copywriting has multiple business advantages:

• Higher open and conversion rates

• Increased ROI [1] 

• Stronger relationships with your target audience

• Higher customers loyalty

• Better email reply rate => potential new meetings

[1] According to Litmus, when your email copywriting is on point, you can expect a return on investment (ROI) of up to $36 per dollar spent.

5. Analytics & Testing

It’s essential to understand the most important metrics and how to measure the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns.

Here are some email marketing KPIs for reference. Average email open rate and clicks rate is highly dependent on your industry, but if your email open rate is about 10-15% that’s already a great result.

To find the right email marketing agency for your projects, use the Project submission tool on TechBehemots. Simply describe your business needs and the system will match you with the best possible service providers.