Although digital marketers today are exploring all digital channels at their disposal to reach out to more people, email continues to be a primary marketing tool. Email marketing is a tried and tested marketing method, that has successfully converted leads and engaged with customers. But with the advent of so many other communication channels, be it real-time chats, social media, live videos, or any other latest trend, has email marketing lost its shine?
This report some of the important statistics on email marketing from the year 2020 that reflect the current state of email as a digital marketing tool.
Email usage statistics for 2020
The success of any marketing is largely dependent on the number of people that are available on that medium. The greater number of people using a particular channel means the more outreach the marketing campaign gets. The same is true for email marketing too. How many people use email, which demography they belong to, everything determines the success of email marketing.
Here are a few key statistics on email usage globally.
- There are 4.03 billion email users globally in 2020
- By 2024, the number of global email users is predicted to rise to 4.4 billion
- Roughly 306.4 billion emails were sent and received every day in 2020.
- The number of emails sent and received is expected to increase up to 361.6 billion by 2024.
- 58% of users check their emails before checking social media or any other channel
These statistics clearly indicate that the use of email as a medium of communication, globally, is only going to be increasing in the coming years. Despite the many new communication channels at their disposal, people still rely on emails for most of their official interactions. This is good news for email marketing as well, since a greater number of users could mean better outreach and better ROI.
Email open statistics for 2020
Not all marketing emails get opened and thus, serve their purpose. There are a lot of different factors that determine when a target customer would click to open an email. Email open rate is another metric that can be used to determine the success of email marketing campaigns. Unless a target customer opens an email, it cannot be considered that they have taken an action to not be considered a lead. Tracking email open rates can help a digital marketer understand what is lacking in their campaign and what could be done to improve it.
Some statistics related to email open rates are listed below.
- 47% of email recipients open an email solely based on the subject line.
- 69% of recipients mark emails as spam based on the subject line as well.
- The open rates of emails from Government agencies increased by 10.71% by the end of 2019.
- Government, non-profit and education industries saw the highest open rates.
- Email subject lines with the recipient’s name have higher open rates.
These statistics make one thing clear. That is people only tend to open emails that they trust or find useful. Subject lines of emails play a very crucial role in determining open rates. Subject lines that generate intrigue or excitement are found to be more effective in this regard. People open emails with subject lines that kindle their curiosity incite a fear of missing out or seem funny or entertaining. Personalization of the subject lines also seems to work in generating interest among recipients.
Email marketing usage in 2020
Digital marketers have always used email marketing as a primary medium from the very beginning. But the statistics keep changing year after year and it is difficult to say whether email marketing is still equally popular among marketers without looking at the numbers. It is also important to know which areas of email marketing they focus more on, to understand how the method is evolving with time.
Here are some email marketing usage statistics obtained from surveys involving marketers and businesses worldwide.
- Email personalization is the number 1 tactic marketers use to improve their campaign’s’ performance.
- As of 2019, 73% of marketers considered email crucial to their companies’ success.
- 87% of B2B marketers use email marketing for organic, or free, content distribution.
- The majority of marketers send 3 to 5 emails on average to their customers every week.
- 90% of marketers use email engagement as a metric to measure the performance of their content marketing efforts.
- Email newsletters are the third highest used content type for B2B marketers, with 81% of marketers using it.
- 20% of marketers say that email design is improving email engagement for their business.
Personalizing email marketing campaigns and better designing of emails is seen to be a top priority for digital marketers when it comes to improving their market campaign’s performance. Marketers continue to use email marketing as a means of reaching out, distributing content, and engaging customers. However, the number of emails sent weekly by most marketers ranges from 3 to 5. This means too many or too few emails sent can affect your campaign’s performance too. In fact, customers are found to unsubscribe to emails when they receive too many emails, too frequently from a business.
Email ROI statistics
For any business activity, the return on investment is an important metric that tells you whether the efforts and the investment that have gone into the process have been worthwhile. In email marketing, ROI plays an important role in measuring the campaign’s success.
Whether emails are popular with some of your target customers or whether you find email marketing convenient, all of it ultimately boils down to how many leads your campaign could convert. And that directly translates to how much money your email marketing campaign could make.
Below are some statistics and facts about email marketing ROI.
- For every $1 spent on email marketing, an average of $42 can be expected in return.
- A majority of marketers spend more than 40% of their marketing budget on email.
- Emails drive more conversions than social media, search, or direct traffic.
- 30% of marketers say that email marketing has the highest ROI
- 80% of marketers believe that email marketing is best for customer acquisition.
- 73% of marketers rate ROI from email marketing to be “good” or “excellent”
From these statistics, it is quite clear that most digital marketers enjoy good ROI from email marketing. Email marketing also accounts for a major portion of the marketing budget for most businesses. Emails seem to drive better conversion than other digital marketing channels too, including social media and website traffic. The reason behind this could be that there are more email users worldwide than social media users.
Email engagement statistics
Email marketing ROI depends largely on the engagement driven by the marketing campaign. Email engagement can be increased by using the right kind of subject lines and content in your emails can boost engagement. Email engagement is another important metric used to measure campaign success.
Some key statistics related to email engagement are listed below.
- Email open rates across different industries amount to 22.8% while social media engagement lies at 0.58%
- Tuesday is the best day of the week to send emails for maximum engagement, according to studies.
- 74% of marketers say that targeted, personalized emails increase customer engagement.
- Automation increases email click rates by 152%
- Relevant emails drive 18 times more engagement than general emails.
- Including the word “video” in the email subject line can increase open rates by 19% and boosts click-through rates by 65%.
Statistics show that personalizing your emails can have a huge impact on improving email engagement. Moreover, the day and time of sending an email also have an impact on its engagement rate. Diverse content such as images, gifs, videos, etc. can drive more email engagement. Also, emails that are relevant to the recipient are found to be more engaging than general emails.
What causes users to unsubscribe to emails?
Most studies and surveys have found that the number one reason why users unsubscribe to emails from a business is that they get too many emails. No matter how beneficial your offer or your product is to a customer, they do not want to be spammed with emails. Too many emails, irrelevant emails, and emails that blatantly try to sell to customers are found to be the major causes for losing subscribers.
Conclusion
From all the statistics and facts covered in this report, it is safe to say that email marketing is still very much a strong contender among all the digital marketing tools. Though social media marketing, influencer marketing, and the likes have grown in popularity over the years, email marketing continues to be one of the major marketing channels. Email accounts for a major chunk of the marketing budget and marketers are constantly looking for new ways to make their emails more engaging. The ROI from emails is also considerably higher than the ROI from all social media channels combined. Email marketing is here to stay, and with the right tactics, emails can drive growth for businesses.
