Email Marketing Statistics and Trends

Email marketing has legs. Doubters could consult an Exhibitor study showing 50% of trade show marketers and exhibitors planned to increase spending on this marketing medium in 2016. These other email marketing statistics and trends should also help prove “you’ve got mail” marketing remains popular.

Email Marketing Statistics

Email marketing spending in the U.S. is forecast to grow by 1 billion between 2014 and 2019. Forrester Researcher forecasts a 3.07 billion email marketing spend in 2019.

Both enterprise and mid-market companies shared the same five objectives for improving email marketing ROI in 2015.

• Greater use of analytics in order to optimize communications
• Improving segmentation and targeting
• Centralizing customer data and making it actionable
• Utilizing real-time data
• Increasing relevancy of direct communications through the use of dynamic content

Even the ordering of the priorities was the same with the exception of increasing relevancy which took the fourth place spot from utilizing real-time data for mid-market respondents.

Among the B2Bs able to identify revenue growth according to marketing channel, 31% saw email as the leading channel, compared to 16% identifying SEO and 12% pointing to paid search. B2C’s meanwhile saw greater revenue growth from paid search (24%).  SEO and email tied as a revenue-generating channel among 19% of respondents.

The Future of Email Marketing

The number of email users worldwide is predicted to reach 2.9 billion by 2019, according to the Radicati group.

Email advertising too is expected to grow from 0.25 billion US dollars in 2014 to 0.35 billion in 2019.

Email Marketing Efficacy

With so many email users worldwide, and 205 billion emails sent and received each day, effectiveness matters.

Marketing email nets a $38 return for every dollar spent. — Litmus

For instance, although Epsilon reported an increase in email opens in 1st quarter 2016, the CTR has been steadily falling for three years.

At least those optimizing for Apple mobile devices are seeing higher open rates.

53% of emails are opened on mobile devices — Salesforce

Yet design matters. A lot based on this BlueHornet study’s responses:

And keep in mind this is from 2014! Imagine what that rate is like now in 2016 with mobile email’s rising prominence.

Improving Email Marketing

Beyond making sure to optimize for mobile and paying attention to design elements, here are a few more email marketing tips:

• Have recipients opt-in to email list.
• Allow recipients to opt-out.
• Make value of email clear.
• Use high quality images where appropriate.
• Focus on driving just one action.
• Don’t email too often.
• Test subject lines, from lines and email body text.
• Personalize.

Automated email messages average 70.5% higher open rates and 152% higher click rates than non-automated sends —
Epsilon

One final guideline? Track the success of email campaigns. Some key metrics include:

• Clickthrough rate (CTR) — % of recipients clicking on link within email
• Conversion rate — % of recipients clicking on link within email and completing desired action
• Bounce rate — % of your emails that could not be successfully delivered
• List growth rate — uhm, yeah, that’s the rate at which your list is growing
• Email Sharing/Forwarding Rate — % people who are clicking on your social sharing or forward to a friend button
• Overall ROI — Revenue divided by spend

The average person, in fact, has an average of 1.9 accounts, accounts that are more immediately accessible with technology advances in connectivity and smartphone devices. All of these email marketing statistics and trends show one thing, though. Marketers need to work hard to stand out.

Email Marketing Statistics and Trends Sources
Email Marketing in the U.S. — Statista Dossier. (2015, August). https://www.statista.com/topics/1446/email-marketing/