“Nobody reads email.”
“People get too much email already.”
People keep saying variations of the same thing: Email is dead.
And yet – despite all these predictions – year after year email continues to stay strong.
2015 showed that email is still the best way to reach your market and your goals. Goals like:
- Nurturing prospects to full-fledged clients
- Keeping current clients close and connected to your brand (safe from attrition)
- Put more offers in front of a receptive audience, through well-timed, well placed offers.
A lot of people like to give huge laundry lists of stats with no context or meaning. They look VERY IMPRESSIVE and come in handy for people writing reports. But they can be a bit too much. What the heck do all those statistics mean anyway?
Here are 19 important email marketing statistics, and why they matter.
REACHING YOUR AUDIENCE
STAT #1: 90% of emails land in the recipient’s inbox. (Forrester)
WHAT IT MEANS: Email is the perfect medium to get the message across
Email marketing has a ridiculously high delivery rate. According to Nate Elliot at Forrester, 90% of emails land in the recipient’s inbox. Now, let’s take a closer look at Facebook. The last few years have seen social organic reach plummet. As I covered in Why Email is Eating Social Media’s Lunch as few as 2-6% of your Facebook fans actually see your posts. Facebook seems to change the rules for ‘organic’ or unpaid exposure regularly. The general consensus is if you want to stand out in social media – you’re gonna have to pay. Look at it this way. If you have 10,000 followers/fans, only 200 will see your un-promoted Facebook post. Compare this to 9,000 out of 10,000 email subscribers receive your email. Both of these groups are ‘your audience.’ But in email you don’t have someone else controlling how you communicate.
STAT #2: People Spend 6 hours a day checking email (Adobe)
WHAT IT MEANS: Email is where people spend their time
According to a survey by Adobe, respondents report using email six hours a day, or 30+ hours a week.
And where we check our mail is just as important. Yes, we check it at work – juggling incoming emails like a live grenade, striving for a ‘zero inbox.’ But, outside of work, Americans check their email while doing all sorts of activities:
- watching TV (70%),
- from bed (52%),
- on vacation (50%),
- while on the phone (43%),
- from the bathroom (42%)
- while driving (18%).STAT #3: 33.8% check their emails throughout the day (Business Insider)STAT #4: 70% open emails from brands and companies looking for coupons and discounts (Inmar)
STAT #5: Email drives 82% of digital retail customer retention (Criteo)
WHAT IT MEANS: People Check Their Mail Constantly and Want Good Offers
Simply put – most of us are email addicts. If you want to reach people – email them.
And email is critical to commerce. While we all hate spam, people clearly want offers from their favored brands. With 70% of consumers actively checking email looking for coupons and discounts, the channel is the strongest digital method for customer retention.
How Often Americans Check Their Email Chart 2015
EMAIL IS A MOBILE FIRST EXPERIENCE
STAT #6: 91% of users rely on their phones to check emails (Inbound Rocket)
STAT #7: 64% of decision makers make use of their mobile device to read emails (Email Expert)
STAT #8: 42% of email subscribers will delete an email they can’t read on a mobile device (Blue Hornet/Digital River)
WHAT IT MEANS: Email is a mobile-first experience
Come on – you knew this one. Emails must be easy to read on mobile devices.
This is fairly simple to connect the dots with – right? Most people, including decision makers, rely on their phones to read email and will delete messages they can’t read.
On the plus side, the number of people who will delete a badly formatted email on a mobile device is actually going down. In 2015 42% of people surveyed indicated they would delete an email they couldn’t read on a mobile device. That’s down from 71% in 2014.
If you’re sending text-only emails this probably doesn’t matter much to you. But if you send highly branded, image heavy emails – test them.
Also – think beyond the email. Where are you sending people? The same rules apply to the entire experience. People leave web-sites that aren’t mobile friendly. Local mobile searchers especially don’t want to ‘zoom scroll, tap’ when they could just ‘tap.’
Clearly mobile-first matters. Ignore it at your own peril.
GETTING MORE LEADS AND ENGAGMENT
STAT #9: Nurtured leads can increase the sales by up to 20% more than cold leads. (DemandGen)
STAT #10: Nurtured leads can help increase sales by up to 20% more than cold leads. (Entrepreneur)
WHAT IT MEANS: Email Marketing is Lead Nurturing
You’ve probably heard about lead nurturing. But just what is it?
Lead nurturing is simply giving people valuable information and resources specific to their needs. This is how you build strong brand loyalty. You can even do it before someone becomes a paying customer/client.
Sharing helpful information through email marketing campaigns has the ability to build positive relationships. Positive relationships drive business.
According to Aaron Agius, in 7 Statistics That Prove Email Marketing Isn’t Dead, nurtured leads can help increase sales by up to 20% more than cold leads.
Lead nurturing is critical to maintaining audience engagement and good will. The value you provide buys you the good will needed to present offers to your list. Then you can balance giving value and offers through email campaigns over and over again.
STAT #11: 72% of consumers prefer getting promotional content in email. (Marketing Sherpa)
WHAT IT MEANS: Consumers want to communicate with companies through email.
Email is decidedly consumer’s most preferred method of communication. It has a first place lead of 24% over the second place choice of postal mail (preferred by 48%).
Social media (16%) was a distant 6th place behind television ads (34%) and print media (31%).
Males aged 35-44 were the biggest users of email. 87% reported email as their favorite channel.
What does this mean for social media? Should you ignore it?
Not at all – remember social media and email marketing can work together. People just have different uses and expectations from each.
STAT #12: 38-41% of email readers spend 0-3 seconds reading an email (Movable Ink)
WHAT IT MEANS: Email readers have a short attention span -grab their attention fast
Users swiftly decide if your email is useful or not. If it’s not, you’re going into the trash (just like with old-fashioned snail mail).
Here’s a breakdown of how much time users spend reading emails on desktop and mobile:
Desktop:
- 0-3 seconds- 37.88%
- 3-15 seconds- 24.67%
- More than 15 seconds- 37.45%
Mobile:
- 0-3 seconds- 41.01%
- 3-15 seconds- 24.93%
- More than 15 seconds- 34.06%
What can you do to get the reader’s attention? Sender recognition is an important part of getting your email opened. The receiver should be able to recognize your email and recognize it as a non-spam email.
Build reputation for providing value through lead nurturing to increase positive inbox name recognition.
Other important elements include using attention grabbing right subject lines and snippet text. Snippet text is the first few lines in your email which appear next to the subject in many email programs.
REACHING YOUR BUSINESS GOALS
Stat #13: At 66%, email has the highest conversion rate (compared to social media and direct mail) (DMA)
Stat #14: You are 6x more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than a Tweet (Campaign Monitor)
Stat #15: People who get email offers spend 138% more than people who don’t receive email offers (Convince and Convert)
WHAT IT MEANS: Email converts
Want something that performs reliably? According to Jay Baer, people who get email offers simply spend more.
Email drives engagement and conversion. Yes, other channels (like social media) can build brand, awareness, and even generate leads. But people click more, and spend more, in response to email.
Stat #16: Every $1 invested on email has an average return of $38-$44 (Campaign Monitor / Email Expert)
WHAT IT MEANS: Email can boost your company’s profits
Reports vary. Email Expert says every $1 spent on email marketing earns an average of $38 in ROI. ExactTarget says $44.25.
I say: Po-TAY-toe. Po-TAH-toe.
A well executed email strategy offers some of the highest ROI per dollar spent.
Look – you have to invest in strategies that allow your company to gain revenues.
Regardless which data point you choose, email marketing drives significant Return On Investment.
Stat #17: 53.5% of emails received by users are promotional emails (Retargeting)
WHAT IT MEANS: The majority of emails received are promotional – stand out
US companies send around 1.4 million emails a month? 53.5% of emails received by users are promotional emails, and only 28.3% are transactional. That leaves 18.2% emails to be personal emails (Retargeting).
Focus on standing out from the rest of the promotional emails. Sending mediocre promotional emails can be a waste of time and money.
How do you know what works? Testing.
Run A/B tests on different formats, content and subject lines. Then use the data you collect to decide which email works best for your market.
Stat #18: 45% of email clicks come from mobile (Yesmail)
Stat #19: The average revenue per mobile click is $0.40 (Yesmail)
WHAT IT MEANS: Mobile email is all about the money
Mobile mail engagement is growing rapidly.
61% of consumers will leave a website that is not mobile friendly. You must integrate responsive design in your website.
Mobile CTO (Click To Open) has increased by over 20% YoY while Desktop CTO has increased by over 6% YoY. In 2015, average revenue per mobile click is at $0.40, more than twice the average revenue per click on desktop at $0.19.
* * *
It constantly amazes me how many businesses simply don’t take advantage of email marketing – some of them with hundreds or thousands of customers just waiting for amazing value and offers.
If you haven’t taken the first step towards email marketing, start this year.
Stop stalling, stop making excuses. Just do it.
If you aren’t sure where to start – feel free to drop me a line to discover how email can work for your business.
