Interesting Facts About Email Marketing

2.6 billion email users worldwide. 91% of these users check their inboxes daily. It is no wonder that email marketing is still one of the most powerful marketing tools available today! As such, there is no better channel to offer products and services than through email. 

70% of people still prefer email as their means of communication with businesses – it is professional, organised, and easy to access. 

Since email has been around for such a while now, many expected email marketing to be put to bed in favour of newer marketing forms, like chatbots and social media. However, statistics suggest otherwise: email marketing is here to stay, despite the increase in use of newer marketing strategies.

According to a data compilation by Marketing Cloud, 73% of marketers say that email marketing is the core of their business while 60% of marketers  say that the strategy is a critical selling medium of their products and services.

Still unconvinced about email marketing? Here are the best email marketing facts we could find!

Email Marketing and Businesses

Email marketing is still one of the foundational strategies used by companies. Although this is not applicable to all businesses, 74% of marketers believe that it will produce ROI sometime in the future. And these people are correct – according to Direct Marketing Association (DMA), email marketing results in 4,300% ROI on average!

That being said, some businesses who understand the power of email marketing – approximately 43% of them – have an email team consisting of 2 to 3 employees. These people either work in-house or remotely, and are usually tasked with writing emails, sending them to the right segments, as well as contact management. Aside to this, email marketing has greatly increased demand for the business outsourcing industry.

Email Engagement Statistics

Email engagement varies from industry to industry. One industry may view a 10% open rate as very low, whilst another industry may consider that a success.

According to Smart Insights, the hobbies industry has the highest open rate of about 30%, compared to the daily deals or e-coupons industry with the lowest open rate of about 14%. These findings are logical. The hobbies industry is filled with passionate individuals: with correct list segmentation and targeting, this could result in high conversion rates. On the other hand, there is less passion and interest involved in deals or e-coupons sites, because there is less everyday interest for them. Open rates are likely to be lower. 

Return On Investment

Email marketing has one of the highest ROI of any online marketing activity at a sizeable 4,300%. More than half of marketers’ instincts are correct – about 60% of marketers believe that email marketing is an ROI generating activity. Simple campaign optimisations can also help to increase your ROI.

Testing and re-testing email strategies is one optimisation technique and 74% of companies who do this report positive ROI. This is a process where you tweak and re-tweak certain parts of your email until you are satisfied with the results. Making the subject line shorter or more intriguing and adding social buttons in the email body are just some ways you can  increase your ROI. On top of this, if you optimise your emails for image blocking, you can even expect a 9% increase in ROI.

Click-To-Open Rates

If you go ahead and decide to begin an email marketing campaign for your business, do make sure that you can satisfy both points; else, your efforts will go to waste:

1.    Your email should NOT go to the spam inbox.
2.    Your email should be opened and read.

As we looked at in our previous article, increasing open rates is key to ensuring good conversions. Aside to this, keeping your emails relevant, informative and clear are ways of ensuring your subscribers continue opening your emails.

But did you know that 33% of emails are opened because of the subject line? Long, detail-heavy titles are actually ignored over short and concise ones. Use this statistic to your advantage: create intrigue in your email but first, create titles and messages that attract attention and invite your subscribers in. Couple this with great branding and design and you’re on the right track!

Gone Mobile

While the human race has regressed to a more sedentary lifestyle, our emails have evolved and become more dynamic and mobile.

According to Get Vero, 48% of emails are opened on mobile devices and the Apple iPhone has the leading mobile email client share of 27%. Gmail takes second place with a 17% share.

Of course, desktop still plays a major role in email marketing campaigns, but this also means that we have to make our emails more mobile responsive to ensure good open rates on all types of devices.

There’s a bit of a way to go though, as 11% of all marketing emails are responsive. According to BlueHornet, 74% of people immediately delete emails that cannot be viewed correctly. That’s why EmailOctopus has mobile-responsive options to complement any email marketing campaigns you embark on!

Conclusion

Looking at these statistics just proves what we already knew. Email marketing is still a popular and powerful digital marketing tool and is here to stay. And recent email marketing stats for 2021 prove it further.

We’ve seen how effective email marketing is and how it can do wonders for your business. So what are you waiting for? Sign up with EmailOctopus today!