Email Marketing
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Easiest way to earn while at home with family
Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group
of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or
current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to
send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations.
Email marketing has been around for over 40 years and despite the numerous
advancements in technology it hasn’t gone anywhere rather it has evolved with
time. The relevance of email marketing in today’s world proves how effective a
tool it is in driving business growth considering how quickly marketers jump on
flashy new techs and trendy tactics.
However, some of its huge impact on companies despite their size, shape and
industry have not been talked about enough and that’s why I will be sharing with
you about email marketing as an industry, its usage and growth over the years.
How much do email marketers make and
HOW?
• Email Marketing – How it all began
• Email Marketing is… everywhere!
• Email Marketing Growth and Projections
Email Marketing – How it all began
Email marketing which began as a simple message sent over a network of university and
government computers is now one of the most used marketing channels by marketers to
promote products and services. But beyond that it has proved to be a very potent and
persuasive tool to build relationships with both prospects and customers. In addition to
this, it is low cost thereby making it one of the most accessible marketing channels for
all.
According to a report by McKinsey email marketing is nearly 40 times more effective
than social media in customer acquisition. You would agree with me that that’s quite a
highly significant figure further proving that email is still central to digital
communication and more importantly online advertising.
So, it’s no surprise more than 80% of small and medium sized businesses choose email
marketing as their best channel for acquiring and retaining customers.
Email Marketing is… everywhere!
Emails have become a part of our lives. As a matter of fact, about 6 out of 10 people
check their email first thing in the morning before social media or anything else. And 9
out of 10 consumers check their emails at least once in 24 hours. This success owes to the
fact that email marketers constantly and continually adapt the use of emails to meet
people’s needs.
At the early stage of email marketing, the common practice was to blast peoples’ emails
with messages (sometimes unsolicited) and hope for a response. But as time went by,
many email marketers came to appreciate and adopt basic segmentation. Today, with the
help of modern tools we can segment based on the past interactions – the quality and
frequency of interactions – of our subscribers with our emails.
Also, over the years, the format of email content has evolved from plain text to include
media like gifs, pictures, banners, videos etc thereby making emails more interactive and
engaging.
According to Martech Advisor, adding videos alone to emails can increase clickthrough
rates by up to 300%.
What’s even more interesting is the integration of email marketing with other
technologies like ecommerce stores, chatbots, social media etc in creating amazing
customer experience through personalization. Generic messages achieve little in today’s
world.
So, the ability to use email to deliver personalized messages is no doubt one of the
reasons why it is still widely adopted. For instance, certain customer actions can be
predefined on your ecommerce store to set off an email to trigger the customer. A
common example is abandoned cart emails which helps to earn about $6 per recipient.
Mobile optimization is another remarkable change that makes email marketing relevant
and usable today as a report shows that about 75% of people check their emails from their
mobile phones.
In recent times, the frequency with which people check their emails has also increased
because mobile phones have made them much more accessible.
Email Marketing Growth and Projections
In 1978, when the first email marketing blast was sent, it was received by 400 recipients.
Today, we have more than 3.9 billion email users spread across the globe and this
number is projected to 4.3 billion in 2023. That’s nearly half of the world’s population.
Not to talk of the staggering number of emails sent and received daily; over 306 billion
emails in 2020 alone according to Statista. This is of course due to the strong return on
investment that email marketing offers among many other benefits. On average you can
expect $42 for $1 spent.
When the first email marketing campaign launched over four decades ago, it generated
$13 million in sales however, today the global email marketing market is estimated at
$7.5 billion with the United States accounting for the most share with 27%.
The global market for email marketing is expected to grow to about $18 billion by
2027 and that’s very achievable considering the recent innovative works of integrating
email marketing with artificial intelligence and cloud-based technology. These
integrations are already being adopted and are expected to shape the future of email
marketing.
With artificial intelligence and machine learning we should see email campaigns
optimized not just based on past records of customer interactions and information but
also on predictive behaviours thereby informing when and how we engage our
subscribers to better serve them.
There might also be an increase in the adoption of machine-generated email copies
optimized for high conversion and engagement as AI algorithms get better at combining
different content.
Furthermore, we should see time-consuming and monotonous tests done much faster and
efficiently with AI so marketers can devote their time and energy to higher-level work on
creativity, strategy and innovation.
In conclusion, email marketing might not be as “fancy” as the newer marketing channels
available today. However, there is no denying the fact that it is still one of the most
effective marketing channels and its evolution over the last 40 years is something worth
reminiscing about even as we lay hold on what the future holds.
The Ultimate List of Email Marketing Stats for 2021
owadays, marketers put a lot of emphasis on webinars, video campaigns, and
other new opportunities to reach their customers.
But your contemporary communication methods shouldn't distract you from
one of the oldest and yet most effective messaging channels — email.
You might be wondering if email is still a worthwhile marketing strategy. Well,
it is.
In fact, email generates $42 for every $1 spent, which is an astounding
4,200% ROI, making it one of the most effective options available.
If you're still hesitant, keep reading — we've cultivated a list of email
marketing statistics for 2021 to demonstrate just how powerful email can be.
Download Now: State of Marketing Report [2021 Version]
Email Marketing Stats (Highlights)
1. There are 4 billion daily email users.
2. More than 40% of marketers saw budget cuts to email since the pandemic.
3. 64% of small businesses use email marketing to reach customers.
4. Nearly 1 in 5 email campaigns is not optimized for mobile devices.
5. Marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in
revenue.
6. 35% of marketers send their customers 3-5 emails per week.
7. 78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12
months.
8. 4 out of 5 marketers said they’d rather give up social media than email
marketing.
9. 20% of retail, e-commerce, and consumer goods and services companies are
personalizing emails based on gender, race, ethnicity.
10.74% of Baby Boomers think email is the most personal channel to communicate
with brands.
General Email Marketing Statistics and Best Practices
• The global e-mail marketing market was valued at $7.5 billion in 2020 and is
projected to increase to $17.9 billion by 2027. (Statista, 2021)
• There are 4 billion daily email users. This number is expected to climb to 4.6
billion by 2025. (Statista, 2021)
• More than 306 billion emails are sent and received each day. (Statista, 2021)
• Active email accounts surpassed 5.6 billion in 2019. (Statista, 2019)
• 64% of small businesses use email marketing to reach customers. (Campaign
Monitor, 2021)
• More than 40% of marketers saw budget cuts to email since the pandemic.
(Litmus, 2020)
• Across all industries, the average email open rate is 19.8%, the click-through rate
is 11.3%, and the bounce rate is 9.4%. (Constant Contact, 2021)
• Marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in
revenue. (Campaign Monitor, 2019)
• 4 out of 5 marketers said they’d rather give up social media than email
marketing. (Litmus, 2020)
• 35% of marketers send their customers 3-5 emails per week. (Not Another
State of Marketing, 2020)
• 78% of marketers in 2020 said email is important to overall company success,
compared to 71% in 2019. (Litmus, 2020)
• 78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12
months (Not Another State of Marketing, 2020)
• 31% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are the best way to nurture leads.
(Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
• The U.S. spent over 350 million dollars on email advertising in 2019. (Statista,
2019)
• Brands that always include an A/B test in their emails generate an ROI of 48:1.
(Litmus, 2019)
• Globally, Fridays see the highest email open rates (nearly 19%), compared to the
lowest open rates (17%) on Saturdays. (Campaign Monitor, 2021)
• 66% of marketers believe artificial intelligence is a way to optimize email send
times. (Statista, 2019)
• 23% of brands have already experimented with interactive elements in email, an
additional 32% are planning on trying it soon. (Not Another State of Marketing,
2020)
B2B Email Marketing Statistics
• 81% of B2B marketers say their most used form of content marketing is email
newsletters. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
• 16% of all emails never make it into the inbox. (Email Tool Tester, 2019)
• On average, B2B companies send one email marketing campaign every 25 days.
(SuperOffice, 2020)
• 31% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are the best way to nurture leads.
(Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
• 87% of B2B marketers say email is one of their top free organic distribution
channels. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
• 90% of content marketers say email engagement is the top metric they track to
measure content performance. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
• 89% of all B2B email campaigns are sent from a company name. (SuperOffice,
2020)
• The second-most common technology B2B organizations use to assist with
content marketing is mail marketing software. Roughly 85% of marketers say
they work with these tools. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
Mobile Marketing Statistics
• Nearly 55% of global website traffic is generated from mobile devices, excluding
tablets. (Statista, 2021)
• Apple iPhone's native email app has the highest market share, followed by Gmail.
(Litmus Labs, 2021)
• Nearly 1 in 5 email campaigns is not optimized for mobile devices. (SuperOffice,
2020)
• Launching a mobile-responsive email design can increase unique mobile clicks
by 15%. (MailChimp, 2019)
• Mobile-friendly email is the second most-used tactic email marketers to improve
their performance. (HubSpot, 2020)
• 9.3% of email clicks come from tablets, rather than smartphones or
computers. (MailChimp, 2019)
• Although people primarily check email on iPhone devices, Gmail is still the most-
used email service, with more than 1.5 billion users (CNBC, 2019)
B2C Email Marketing Statistics
• Your audience will reward you with higher open and click rates if you don’t send
more than five newsletters a week. (GetResponse, 2020)
• 60% of retail, e-commerce, and consumer goods and services companies are
personalizing emails based on past purchases, versus 38% in 2019. (Litmus,
2020)
• More than 8 out of 10 people will open a welcome email, generating 4x as many
opens and 10x as many clicks as other email types. (GetResponse, 2020)
• The single message autoresponder email had an astonishing 98% open rate and a
37% click-through rate. (GetResponse, 2020)
• Nearly 22% of all email campaigns are opened within the first hour of sending.
(GetResponse, 2020)
• 45% of internet users avoid opening emails from unknown addresses. (Statista,
2019)
Email Marketing Demographics 2021
• 99% of email users check their inbox every day, with some checking 20 times a
day. Of those people, 58% of consumers check their email first thing in the
morning. (OptinMonster, 2020)
• 40% of consumers say they have at least 50 unread emails in their inbox.
(HubSpot, 2020)
• Emails sent by independent artists, writers, and performers have the highest
open rate at 34.4%, followed by education (34.1%) and travel and tourism
(32.6%). (Constant Contact, 2021)
• On average, the highest email click-through rate goes to the Consulting services
industry at 25%, with Administrative and Business Support services in second at
20%, and Home and Building services in third at nearly 19%. (Constant Contact,
2021)
• 26% of retail emails bounce, putting it well above the 9% average bounce rate
for all industries. (Constant Contact, 2021)
• 20% of retail, e-commerce, and consumer goods and services companies are
personalizing emails based on gender, race, ethnicity, versus 11% in 2019.
(Litmus, 2020)
• 59% of Millennials primarily use their smartphone to check email, while 67% of
Generation Z scans their inbox on mobile. (Bluecore, 2021)
• 74% of Baby Boomers think email is the most personal channel to receive
communications from brands, followed by 72% of Gen X, 64% of Millennials, and
60% of Gen Z. (Bluecore, 2021)
• 91% of women in the US use email, compared to 89% of men. (Statista, 2019)
• Asian Americans are the most popular email users in the US (92%), followed by
white users (91%), African American users (88%), Hispanic users (85%), and
American Indian or Alaskan Native users (83%). (Statista, 2019)
Apply Your Email Knowledge
Many of the data points will help you make the case for investing more time
and money into your email marketing strategy. While you can refer back to
this post at any time, you can also start applying them to your next campaign.
Editor's Note: This blog post was originally published in March 2019, but was
updated for comprehensiveness and freshness.
