Emails transform our world. How can marketers unlock the potential of that area of communication?
Why do we love email marketing? Because it’s cost-effective, powerful and easy-to-track way of staying in touch with our audience. Below we gathered some up-to-date stats that prove that point.
The stats are organized in 7 categories:
- General overview
- Results email marketing provides
- 1-to-1 emails
- Email personalization
- Email marketing vs. Marketing Automation
- Email marketing vs. social media
- Email marketing vs. mobile.
Enjoy and feel free to share them!
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General Overview
In general, the amount of people who use email systematically grows and emails become a vital part of our everyday life and work. It’s not going to change anytime soon.
Marketing budgets reflect the trend: we’re going to spend more and more on email marketing.
- The total number of worldwide email accounts will rise to over 4.3 billion accounts by year-end 2016. – Radicati Group
- 82% of B2B and B2C companies use email marketing technology. – Ascend2
- 50% of marketers anticipate their company’s spend on email to increase during 2015. – DMA
- An average employee spends 13 of her working hours each week in her email inbox. – McKinsey & Company
- 92% of digitally literate adults use email, with 61% using it on an average day. – Pew Research
- 57% of email subscribers spend between 10 and 60 minutes browsing marketing emails during the week. – ChoozOn
- 68% of Americans say they base their decision to open an email on the ‘From’ name. – Campaign Monitor
- 6 out of 10 American workers who use the internet claim email is “very important” for doing their job. – Pew Research
- Non-office-based workers to say the internet, email, and smart phones have given them more flexibility in the hours they work (51% vs. 19%) but also that these tools have increased the amount of time spent working (47% vs.18%). – Pew Research
- 83% of B2B marketers use email newsletters for content marketing. – Content Marketing Institute
- 76% of marketers observe active growth in their number of email subscribers. –Ascend2
- Open rate is highest when companies send 2 emails per month. – Database Marketing Institute
- At 1.47 million emails sent per month, US companies send more emails than the global average of 1.38 million. – MarketingLand
- Sending 4 emails in a month instead of just 1 significantly increases the number of recipients opening more than one email – WhoIsHostingThis “Email Deliverability 101”
Results email marketing provides
OK, we send and receive more and more emails, but is it really the best channel for marketing actions? Yes!
The most common metrics for tracking email marketing efficiency are conversion rate and (return on investment). Both are impressive!
- Email marketing has an ROI of 3800%. It means that for every dollar you spend on email marketing, you get 38 dollars. – DMA
- 60% of marketing specialists use conversion rates to evaluate an email’s effectiveness. – DMA
- Nearly 1 in 5 companies (18%) reported an ROI of more than $76 in 2014, which is 3x more than 2013 figures (5%). – DMA
- Email’s ROI was 28.5% compared to 7% for direct mail. – Chief Marketer
- Revenue per email was $0.11 in Q1 2014 compared to $0.10 in Q4 2013. –Experian
- 29% of marketers look at ROI metrics to assess email effectiveness. – DMA
1-to-1 Emails
Email marketing =/= newsletters! Apart from sending regular digital bulletins, you can use email marketing to send personal, 1-to-1 messages, where you react in real time to user’s actions or tailor the message to user’s preferences and context.
- Transactional emails have 8 times more opens and clicks than any other type of email, and can generate 6 times more revenue (Experian)
- Over 75% of email revenue is generated by triggered campaigns, rather than batch-and-blast campaigns. Automated email actions account for 21% of email marketing revenue. – DMA
- Behavior-triggered emails were responsible for 30% of revenue in 2014, up from 17% in 2013. – DMA
- 77% of ROI comes from segmented, targeted, and triggered campaigns. – DMA
Email personalization
Data show that personalization is vital. Open Rates for bulk newsletters dropped 4 times in the last 5 years (Gleanster). When compared to bulk messages, personalized emails work much better in terms of customer engagement, conversion rates, and revenue. In other words, for effective email marketing, personalization is a must.
Personalization is an umbrella term for a set of actions undertaken to customize the content, channel, form and delivery time of the marketing message to particular customers’ preferences, habits, demography and their current situation. It includes simple, superficial operations (like adding recipient’s name in the subject line of an email) to advanced campaigns (like dynamic website content or complex workflows).
- Personalized email messages improve CTR by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%. – Aberdeen
- 74% of marketers say targeted personalization boosts customer engagement. – eConsultancy
- 39% of online retailers send personalized product recommendations via email. – Certona
- Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. – Campaign Monitor
- Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates. – Experian
- 53% of marketers say ongoing, personalized communication with existing customers results in moderate to significant revenue impact. – DemandGen
- Segmented and targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue. – DMA
- 75% of companies plan to invest in personalized messaging in 2015. –VentureBeat
- Segmented campaigns show a 760% increase in revenue. –Campaign Monitor
- Marketers see an average increase of 20% in sales when using personalized digital experiences. – Monetate
- 50% of companies feel they can increase interaction within email by increasing personalization. – Experian
- Personalized promotional emails had 29% higher unique OR and 41% more unique CTR. – Experian
Email marketing vs. Marketing Automation
These two are often confused with each other, but are not the same.
The difference? Automation includes much wider array of features, including:
- Users online behavior monitoring
- Building compound customer profiles
- Real-time marketing
- Using customer data to personalize communication in every channel available (website, social media, RTB networks, mobile app, and email of course)
Moreover, due to rich customer profiles, Marketing Automation Platform will allow you for more advanced personalization techniques.
- 95% of companies using Marketing Automation take advantage of email marketing. – Regalix
- 56% of businesses currently use an email marketing provider and are 75% or more likely to purchase marketing automation software over the next year. –VentureBeat
- There were nearly 11x more B2B organizations using marketing automation in 2014 than in 2011. – SiriusDecisions
- Revenue for B2B marketing automation systems increased 60% to $1.2 million in 2014, compared to a 50% increase in 2013. – VentureBeat
- B2C marketers who leverage automation have seen conversion rates as high as 50%. – eMarketer
- Automated email messages average 70.5% higher open rates and 152% higher click-through rates than “business as usual” marketing messages. – Epsilon Email Institute
- In 2014, 70% of businesses were currently using a marketing automation platform or were implementing one. – Aberdeen
- As of 2013, 25% of Fortune 500 B2B companies had adopted email marketing automation. – ClickZ
- Companies who send automated emails are 133% more likely to send relevant messages that correspond with a customer’s purchase cycle. – Lenskold and Pedowitz Groups
Email marketing vs. Social media
Some say social media killed email. They couldn’t be more wrong.
- You are 6x more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than you are from a tweet.- Campaign Monitor
- 90% of email gets delivered to the intended recipient’s inbox, whereas only 2% of your Facebook fans see your posts in their News Feed. – Forrester Research
- Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter. – McKinsey
- 81% of online shoppers who receive emails based on previous shopping habits were at least somewhat likely to make a purchase as a result of targeted email. -eMarketer
- When it comes to purchases made as a result of receiving a marketing message, email has the highest conversion rate (66%), when compared to social, direct mail and more. – DMA
- Email subscribers are 3 times more likely to share your content via social media than visitors from other sources. – QuickSprout
- The average order value of an email is at least three times higher than that of social media. – McKinsey
- 72% people prefer to receive promotional content through email, compared to 17% who prefer social media. – MarketingSherpa
- 24% of visitors from email marketing buy something as compared to 2.49% of visitors from search engines and 0.59% from social media. – Monetate
- Including a call to action button instead of a text link can increase conversion rates by as much as 28%. – Campaign Monitor
- Email marketing drives more conversions than any other marketing channel, including search and social. – Monetate
- A message is 5x more likely to be seen in email than via Facebook. – Radicati
Email marketing vs. mobile
We don’t just open our emails on desktop anymore. In a constant hurry, we prefer to check the inbox on our smartphone in every situation possible: when in bed, in the toilet, on a bus, waiting for something… What it means to marketers?
- 53% of emails are opened on mobile devices. – Campaign Monitor
- 23% of readers who open an email on a mobile device reopen it later. –Campaign Monitor
- 75% of Gmail’s 900M users access their accounts via mobile devices. –TechCrunch
- Data for over 1.8 billion opens from campaigns sent in 2013 shows that mobile is the most popular environment for a subscriber’s first interaction with an email. –Campaign Monitor
- From 2011 to 2013, email opens on mobile phones devices increased by 30%. –Campaign Monitor
- The iPhone is the most common mobile device subscribers use to open their email for the first time. – Campaign Monitor
- Though the number of new Internet users is growing at less than 10% per year, the number of new smartphone subscribers is growing at a 20%+ rate. –TechCrunch
- 1 out of every 3 clicks within an email occurs on a mobile device. – Campaign Monitor
- Mobile readers who open an email a second time from a computer are 65% more likely to click through. – Campaign Monitor
So is email marketing dead? No, absolutely! It’s still one of the most powerful marketing tools, provided you apply personalization techniques, Marketing Automation and make sure the message is mobile-optimized.
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