Fun fact: the first electronic mail was sent in 1971. That’s right, email has been around for over 50 years, predating the internet!
Over time, email has evolved from being an inter-office messaging channel to a primary digital marketing tool today. With 4 billion daily users and growing, it’s safe to say that email is not going anywhere anytime soon.
The introduction of cool, contemporary digital marketing channels like social media has led many to believe that email isn’t as effective in reaching customers as it used to be. And you’ve probably heard that email marketing is dying, or already dead, more times than you can count. So, is email marketing really out of the game? Our sources say no.
Email generates a whopping 4200% return on investment (HubSpot, 2022), making it one of the most effective ways to attract and retain customers to this day.
Still not convinced that email is worth investing time, effort and resources in? Buckle up, because we’re about to blow your mind with astounding email statistics.
Types of Email Marketing
Before we jump into key statistics and some ways to refine your email marketing strategy, let’s talk about five common types of email marketing:
1.Welcome Emails
A welcome email is one of the first impressions a brand makes. It’s the first step in forming a relationship with new prospects, and a friendly welcome message may just be the push they need to interact with your business.
If it’s nailed right out of the gate, a welcome email can provide prospects with a positive first experience and lead to increased customer retention.
2.Email Newsletters
Stay top of mind and keep your brand relevant with email newsletters. They are a great way for connecting with prospects as well as nurturing existing customers with company news and events, product announcements, upcoming projects and more.
Sent regularly, email newsletters are effective in helping businesses retain happy customers and collect valuable insights for future campaigns.
3.Lead Nurturing Emails
Often overlooked, lead nurturing is all about taking customers on a journey that may impact buying behaviour. To be successful, it’s important to define your buyer personas to reach your target audience more effectively.
Lead nurturing emails provide more advantages than just an individual email blast because they are more timely, automated and personalised. Email automation technology makes the process possible and simple by sending scheduled emails to leads based on their brand interactions.
As the name suggests, lead nurturing is all about reaching out to leads during every step of the customer journey. The goal of lead nurturing is to establish a connection and build trust over time so your leads are more likely to become paying customers.
A few high-impact lead nurturing strategies include abandoned cart reminder emails to recover otherwise lost revenue, and retention emails that help brands keep existing customers happy by providing them with longer lifetime value.
4. Promotional Emails
Also known as a standalone email, a promotional email contains information that is sent to your database to promote a specific campaign. They work very similarly to a landing page in that they help set up the context to introduce the main call to action. This can ultimately result in immediate and significant revenue generation.
5. Sponsored Emails
A sponsored email is when you pay a third party to send a blast to their database on your behalf. Sponsored emails can be a great way to reach a different group of audience and gain new potential leads. The biggest flex of sponsorship emails over others is that you can be specific in defining the segment of the audience you want to reach. Used well, this type of email can give you an impressive ROI.
Email Marketing Statistics
The following stats are only the tip of the iceberg in the email marketing world. It’s important to keep in mind that your email marketing performance will vary significantly depending on the message, content and execution. With that said, we’ve scoured the internet for some impressive stats on email marketing that will blow any doubts out of the water.
- There are 4 billion daily email users and is expected to grow to 4.6 billion users by 2025 (Statista, 2022)
- More than 306 billion emails are sent and received every day (Statista, 2021)
- Across all industries, the average email open rate is 29.87%, the average click rate is 1.32%, and the average bounce rate is 10.12% (Constant Contact, 2022)
- 31% of B2B marketers report that email newsletters are the best way to nurture leads (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
- Marketers generate a 760% increase in revenue when they use segmented email marketing campaigns (Campaign Monitor, 2019)
- 78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months (HubSpot, 2022)
- Brands that A/B test their emails generate an ROI of 48 to 1 (HubSpot, 2022)
- A mobile-responsive email design can increase unique mobile clicks by 15% (MailChimp, 2019)
- 99% of email users check their inbox every day with some checking as much as 20 times a day (OptinMonster, 2020)
- Email reaches about 85% of the people you send it to (OptinMonster, 2020)
- About 60% of consumers subscribe to a brand’s email list to get promotional messages and deals compared to 20% that follow brands on social media (MarketingSherpa, 2016)
- About 67% of consumers use mobile devices to check their email (OptinMonster, 2020)
- 68% of consumers say that email is the most preferred and most personal way to engage with their favourite brands (Bluecore, 2016)
Email Marketing Best Practices
There is an abundance of tips and best practices available to get the most out of your email marketing efforts. Here are 5 best practices that you can start incorporating into your marketing mix today and launch your email engagement to the next level.
1. Get to Know Your Audience
You need a deep understanding of your audience before you can start emailing them. Start by asking yourself how and when does your audience prefer to communicate, what are their likes and dislikes, and what distinguishes them from the general population?
Once you’ve addressed these questions, you can move on to building an engaged email database.
2. Build Your Email List
You need a database of contacts before you can start sending emails. Whether you’re starting from scratch or you already have an established email list, it’s important to verify that every name on that list was added organically.
You also need to check that each individual subscribed by their own choice and consent. This is so you can weed out any bogus, rented or purchased email addresses from the list and not risk getting blacklisted by major internet service providers.
Getting recipients organically is the only way to build an engaged recipient base, and keep your open and click rates as high as possible.
3. A/B Test to See What Resonates
Test, test, and test some more. It’s important to A/B test every part of your email. We recommend testing only one element at a time for more conclusive results. Test key elements first such as the subject line or the primary call to action.
You also need to make sure you have a significant sample size in your testing for it to be applicable. Once you find a winning element, move on to the next test.
4. Personalise Your Emails
Hyper-personalisation has increasingly become an important aspect of digital marketing. For good reason – personalised messages perform better than those that are not personalised or targeted.
This is true for emails as well. Emails are simply better when they’re personal. Batch-and-blast emails just aren’t going to cut it anymore. Increase your email conversion and engagement rates by including personalisation with the help of intelligent platforms and targeting technology.
5. Optimise Your Email to Mobile
On average, about 67% of users open their emails on a mobile device. This means you need to adapt your email marketing to accommodate smaller screen sizes. According to Adestra, if your email looks funky on mobile, it’s likely to be deleted within 3 seconds. Ouch.
Avoid losing any potential customers by adopting an email layout that works across all devices. Opt for minimal content length and start including call-to-action buttons, full catalogues and full menus within the body of the email to cut down the path of conversion, create the least amount of friction, and encourage mobile users to engage.
6.Automate Your Email Marketing
As your business flourishes, your pool of contacts will also grow. And when your email list grows, it’ll get more complicated to take a highly-targeted and personalised approach.
Don’t panic! Luckily, there are tools available that can optimise and automate targeted email touchpoints for you. Using email automation tools allows you to schedule all emails depending on the business parameters that you provide.
Setting up automation not only makes it easy to find the right audience and engage with customers, but it also increases efficiency and reduces unnecessary interaction with your team members.
So, is email marketing a thing of the past? It’s pretty clear that email marketing is still going strong and is here to stay. It remains to be one of the most relevant and effective ways to reach audiences across all demographics.
Ready to propel your business forward with email marketing? You can count on the DGA Team to do the heavy lifting for you! To find out how to grow your traffic, check out our service page: Email Marketing.
a strategy that will fuel your digital growth.
