Curious about the effectiveness of email marketing? Turning to the numbers paints an impressive picture of just how effective this channel is—and offers a stark reminder of why you should be investing your time and money into your WordPress email marketing efforts.
In this article, we’ve pulled together the best and most recent numbers for this ultimate list of email statistics, including everything from average returns on email marketing spend to specific email tactics that can drive impressive results. These numbers will hopefully validate and guide your email marketing decisions through to the end of 2018 and into the New Year.
Email marketing investment stats
First up, let’s take a look at investment and ROI statistics for email:
- Email has a median ROI of 122%—more than four times higher than other marketing formats, including social media, direct mail and paid search – Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and Demand Metric
- Email marketing spending in the United States is projected to increase from $2.07 billion in 2014 to $3.07 billion by 2019 – Statista
What do the stats tell us?
With email marketing, you are putting your message in front of an eager audience—these people have explicitly subscribed to your email list because they want to hear from you. They’re interested in what you have to say, making it much easier to convert them into a paying customer.
Other marketing channels, like paid search and social media, don’t have the personal or direct touch that email offers. When users come across your brand on these channels, they’re not expecting or even wanting to hear from your company, and are harder to sell to.
How to take action?
Add a MailPoet Subscription widget to the sidebar on your WordPress site and start collecting emails. Even if you have nothing to send straight away, it’s a good idea to start building your email list sooner rather than later.
When you are ready to start sending emails to your subscribers, make sure your emails are packed with value and provide tons of actionable information they can take away and put to good use. Sending thin, wishy-washy, or unoriginal emails is a sure-fire way to get unsubscribes.
If you run an eCommerce store as opposed to a blog, send your subscribers regular updates about product lines that are back in stock, discounts, and nearly sold out products. Creating a sense of urgency with time-sensitive email promotions will help increase your sales.
Email marketing engagement stats
Here’s what the email engagement statistics tell us:
- An email message is 5x more likely to be seen in email than via Facebook– Radicati
- Sending welcome emails to subscribers increases engagement by 33%– Chief Marketer
- Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates – Experian
- The average office worker checks their email 30 times an hour– Marketing Insider Group
- Adding videos to your emails can increase click rates by 300% –Martech Advisor
What do the stats tell us?
We’re more connected than ever, with the rise of the smartphone we’ve also experienced the rise of the online citizen who is always connected, even outside of office hours—perfect for email marketers who want to get their message in front of subscribers any time, anywhere, no matter what the time zone.
Moreover, people actually want to feel connected to brands. Welcome emails offer a warm welcome to new subscribers, while also offering reassurance that the user has successfully joined an email list. This creates an ideal scenario for online stores—including a coupon or discount in a welcome email is sometimes all the push a subscriber needs to convert and become a paying customer.
How to take action?
MailPoet offers both welcome emails and WooCommerce automated emails. Use welcome emails to set up targeted autoresponders for new subscribers. This allows you to send automated emails such as an email course at specific intervals—day, weeks, or immediately after a user subscribes to your email list. You can then target and interact with subscribers and offer discounts, giving them further incentive to convert.
Email marketing personalization stats
Emails are personal, direct, and highly customizable—ideal for delivering marketing messages that connect. Let’s look at personalization statistics:
- Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates – Experian
What do the stats tell us?
No one wants to feel like a number, it’s that simple. If you received an email that sent out en masse with little-to-no personalization, would you be interested in exploring the site further? Probably not.
How to take action?
Email personalization has become so prevalent that users have come to expect it. MailPoet offers a huge stack of useful shortcodes you can use to add personal touches to your emails, including names (i.e. [user:firstname | default:subscriber]).
Make sure you collect the first names of your subscribers on your registration form. This will ensure you can then use MailPoet’s first name shortcode to address subscribers by name, in turn increasing their happiness and connection to your brand.
Responsive email stats
With mobile devices now accounting for 63% of all traffic in the U.S., it’s crucial your emails are responsive. Let’s explore the statistics:
- Emails that are not optimized for mobile devices are deleted by 80.3% of users – Bluehornet
- Out of 1.52 billion email opens, the email clients that witnessed the most opens in 2017 were Apple iPhone, followed by Gmail and Apple iPad – Litmus Email Client Market Share
- 3 out of 10 users unsubscribe from a list if the emails are not mobile-optimized – Bluehornet
What do the stats tell us?
It’s no surprise that people unsubscribe from unoptimized emails, with mobile use now overtaking desktop. No one wants to open an email and have an awkward experience trying to pinch their screen to see the whole email, or the email not even loading correctly on their device.
In our busy online world, subscribers expect your newsletter to load and display properly every single time. If it doesn’t, they’ll simply unsubscribe and move on.
How to take action?
All of MailPoet’s 50+ email templates are responsive out-the-box, so your email newsletter will display on your subscriber’s mobile perfectly every single time. We did this so you can focus on your email content without having to worry about whether your emails will look good on huge desktops and small mobiles. Trust us, they look amazing.
We also built our newsletter designer UI to be flexible without the need for code changes. This ensures that any email you design will look as you intended, no matter the device.
Conclusion
The numbers paint a glowing picture of email marketing and its effectiveness. Compared to other marketing channels, email is more personal, direct, customizable, and offers a higher ROI.
When your email lands in someone’s inbox, you’re in their personal space. Without the distractions that come with other channels, in particular social media, subscribers are more likely to focus on your message, naturally react, and click through to your site.
So what are you waiting for? The numbers prove that email is well-worth investing your time and money in. With MailPoet you can quickly get started building your email list and connecting with—and converting—your subscribers.
Are your email marketing efforts paying off? Or are you thinking about getting started? Perhaps you’ve come across some interesting email marketing stats? Let us know in the comments below.