Email Marketing Statistics and Metrics

This might sound like a SNL ad parody, but email overload is real. 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. Email marketing needs to be relevant to the buyers’ needs and appropriate to their buying lifecycle stage

By the end of 2019, the number of worldwide email users will increase to over 2.9 billion, according to the Radicati Group’s Email Statistics Report 2015-19. With over one-third of the world using email by 2019, it’s important for the email marketer to keep up with email marketing best practices to improve their open, clickthrough and lead generation tactics.

Effective Email Marketing Strategies

With over 205 billion emails sent and received each day, it’s difficult for email marketing — even the most powerful — to get seen.

While a good email is concise, there are a couple of encyclopedias worth of text out there offering strategies to improve email marketing stats. A succinct summary of the highlights suggests:

• Automate. Automated email messages average 70.5% higher open rates and 152% higher click rates than non-automated sends (Epsilon).
• Personalize. This applies not only to emailing an individual, but also to emailing from an individual. For example, emails sent from a named person at Hubspot versus the Hubspot Marketing Team perform better in terms of open and clickthrough rates.
• Test. Test send times. Test CTA buttons. Test content. 84% of organizations combining A/B testing with web personalization had increased conversion rates, according to eConsultancy.
• Maximize. You have only a limited amount of space in an email, but you can make the most of the subject line, preheader, and body text. When it comes to the subject line, avoid boring. As MailChimp puts it, “don’t sell what’s inside — tell what’s inside.” What should you do? You guessed it. Test subject lines too.
• Design. Visuals are going to draw the recipients’ eye. Make sure your design draws audiences in and inspires action.

Monitoring the Results

The job does not end when the email is sent out, though. It’s important too to track the success of the emails. That’s where metrics come into play. Consider these MailChimp findings as of July 5, 2016, identifying average unique opens, unique clicks and bounces across several industries:

This condensed chart alone illustrates the importance of understanding data in context. Only by comparing benchmarks from other brand campaigns and others in the industry can the email marketer improve their efforts.

Key metrics to track 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.

Of course these are only a general guideline. What email metrics you actively benchmark may vary depending on the campaign objective. If you’re trying to generate new contacts email share and forwarding will have more value. Whereas if you are a non-profit looking to increase donations the conversion rate in a fundraising campaign would likely be more valuable.

Some other statistics to think about?

• Welcome emails are 86% more effective than standard email newsletters.
• Thank you emails generate 13% more revenue than other promotional mailings.
• Birthday emails lift conversion rates by 60% over other mailings with the same offer.
• 45% of recipients who receive win-back emails read subsequent messages.
• Nonprofits received $44 in donations for every 1,000 fundraising emails sent.
• The average nonprofit sent its email subscribers 49 messages in 2015.

Sources
eConsultancy. (2015). Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2015. https://assets.econsultancy.com/documents/0001/1094/SAMPLE-Econsultancy-Conversion-Rate-Optimization-Report-2015.pdf
Kolowich, L. (2016, Feb. 18). Email Analytics: The 6 Email Marketing Metrics & KPIs You Should Be Tracking. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/metrics-email-marketers-should-be-tracking
Kolowich, L. (2016, June 21). 19 Simple Email Marketing Tips to Improve Your Email Open and Clickthrough Rates. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/make-emails-more-clickable-list
MailChimp Research. (n.d.). Email Marketing Benchmarks. https://mailchimp.com/resources/research/email-marketing-benchmarks/
M+R. (2016). Benchmarks 2016. https://mrbenchmarks.com/
Radicati Group. (2015 March). Email Statistics Report, 2015-2019.
https://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Email-Statistics-Report-2015-2019-Executive-Summary.pdf
Slutz, J. (2015, November 12). 5 automated emails smart marketers send. https://myemma.com/content-hub#ufh-i-155948853-5-automated-emails-smart-marketers-send
Van Meter, M. (2016, June 15). 7 habits of highly effective email marketers. https://content.myemma.com/h/i/264500241-7-habits-of-highly-effective-email-marketers