An August 2020 study from email production platform Dyspatch and SurveyMonkey found that relevance trumps newness when persuading US consumers to purchase something from a marketing email.
In fact, when asked what type of product recommendation in an email they would most likely act on, 59.4% of US adults cited product suggestions based on their purchase history, compared with just 22.7% who said they’d be most likely to purchase when presented with an email devoted to a newly launched product.
What matters the most to consumers tends to be relevance, personal benefits, and the opportunity to take some action.
Even when an email marketer does everything right, however, the consumer will often refrain from taking action: A September study from performance marketing firm Fluent found that 45% of US consumers said they hadn’t taken any action upon receiving a promotional email in the past six months. Read the rest at eMarketer.
The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same
When it comes to personalization techniques used by retailers, customers prefer to be acknowledged in-store rather than via digital channels, at least when shopping for specialty products, per findings from a RIS News and Cognizant survey of US and Canadian shoppers released in June 2012.
On a 5-point scale, consumers indicated that they like special treatment in the store based on loyalty the most (3.4), and personalized mobile offers the least (2.3).
Other techniques such as personalized offers delivered in-store and acknowledgment of status as a highly valued customer while in-store (both at 3.2) are preferred to website recommendations based on product searches and personalized emails (both at 2.9).
If a younger consumer is the target, though, the script flips. The report notes that while older shoppers prefer store-based methods, shoppers younger than age 45 prefer digital methods of personalization. Read the rest at MarketingCharts.
Email Familiarity Breeds Trust
The Dyspatch survey cited above was presumably conducted among existing subscribers of company emails, which is to say they were not responding to their attitudes about spam.
That trust is obviously a key component to driving conversions. That familiarity is also what makes email an essential product discovery tool for new product launches.
According to a July 2012 report by Capgemini, 58% of the more than 16,000 digital shoppers surveyed across 16 countries rated email as important or extremely important for learning about products.
The value of the internet as a research tool held firm across commodity types.
- 79% of electronics shoppers said the internet is important during the awareness phase.
- 74% of do-it-yourself (DIY) shoppers said the same,
- as did 73% of fashion shoppers,
- 70% of health and personal care shoppers, and
- 59% of food shoppers.
Read the rest at MarketingCharts.
More Retail Email Marketing Statistics
Appeal Of Post-Purchase Brand Emails
More than half of consumers always (20%) or usually (33%) open emails from brands they use.
Factors Affecting Email Engagement
The email marketing service Campaign Monitor did a survey of 400 consumers on how they want to engage with brands through email. And it’s got some interesting stuff.
Email Responsiveness
The infographic below from TimeToReply illstrates a trove of statistics about email generally and about expectations for responding to emails specifically.
Elements Of A Successful Cold Email
This infographic by SEO Reseller breaks down the anatomy of a successful cold email into four essential elements.
Lead Nurturing
This infographic from Pardot illustrates the fundamentals of implementing lead nurturing campaigns.
Marketing Channels Driving Sales
Despite sometimes being overshadowed by other channels like social media, many marketers still consider email to be one of the most important channels available.
Email Marketing Tips
This infographic from Ethos3 illustrates 33 email marketing tips you can start to use right now.
Sender Reputations & Email Delivery Rates
Every year spammers find it more difficult to get their emails into inboxes, thanks to efforts made by email providers. Last year only 16% of emails came from the least reputable senders – a figure down from 25% in 2017.
Email Users, 2018-2022
The percentage of American internet users who have sent an email via any device at least once a month will remain practically the same, rising only from 90.6% in 2018 to an estimated 91.5% in 2022.
Email Benchmarks By Industry
Email click-through declined for business as usual emails in Q4 2018 on a year-over-year basis, per the latest email and benchmark trends report from Epsilon.
Weekly Commercial Message Consumption Frequency
While very few marketers would dispute the effectiveness of personalization, there are still barriers to being able to personalize at scale, namely the time and cost involved in creating personalized content. A survey of more than 1,000 US consumers from Periscope by McKinsey shares some insights on personalized messages and what consumers think of them.
Artificial Intelligence’s Effect On Email Marketing
This infographic from Connext Digital illustrates seven ways artificial intelligences is influencing email marketing.
Email Reading & Dwell Times, 2011-2018
Once opened, the majority of emails manage to catch the reader’s attention, with 61% of all emails being read for 8 seconds or more.
Email Opens By Hour
There’s an argument to be had over whether or not timing helps, but here’s some data nonetheless, starting with the cumulative share of email opens by hour post-send.
Autoresponder Emails Per Cycle
Autoresponder emails are a simple way of automating email, but how long should they be? A new report from GetResponse suggests that short and sweet is better – while open (96%) and click (39%) rates on single-message cycles are very high, those with more than 3 messages see a marked drop-off in response rates.
Email Re-Engagement Tactics Effectiveness
Nearly two-thirds (65%) of B2C and B2B marketers agree that email is either the most or one of the most important marketing channels available.
Email Personalization
This infographic from Post Funnel illustrates why personaliztion is essential to meet customer expectations and to delivering results.
Why Customers Ignore Emails From Retailers
Of the 1,006 US digital buyers surveyed in a June 2018 study from Yes Lifecycle, just 9% of respondents said they don’t ignore emails from retailers.
Email Personalization
This infographic from Active Trail illustrates 13 email personalization statistics to help make your case.
Top Email Marketing Practices
Basic segmentation ranks as the most broadly adopted email marketing practice among company marketers, according to the annual Email Industry Census from Econsultancy and Adestra. Some 82% of respondents worldwide (though predominantly from the UK) use basic segmentation, up from 80% last year.
Marketers’ Challenge With Email
Marketers – who use email primarily to communicate with customers and prospects and to build brand awareness – are struggling most with the competition for attention in the inbox.
15 Email Marketing Hacks
This infographic from 99firms illustrates 15 email marketing hacks you can use to optimize your campaigns.
Triggered Email Conversion Rates
Marketers enjoyed strong email response rates in Q1, perhaps as a result of tempered volume in the wake of the holiday period, according to Yes Lifecycle Marketing’s Q1 Email Benchmark Report 2018.
Email Open & CTRs By Hour
Every year, Omnisend analyzes clients’ email marketing and marketing automation data to see the biggest trends, opportunities and best practices that lead to great conversions and sales.
Automated Marketing Emails
Just 1 in 5 marketers say they use most or all marketing automation features available to them, and even fewer (18%) consider themselves to be Advanced or an Expert.
20 Email Marketing Tips
This infographic from Campaign Monitor illustrates ten do’s and ten don’ts that should be fundamental practices for every email marketer.
Email Personalization Tactics
More than three-quarters (77%) of marketers are personalizing their email marketing, which, joined by websites (52%), are the only channels in which a majority use personalization. That’s according to the 2018 Trends in Personalization report [PDF] from Evergage and Researchscape International, which surveyed 300 marketers on their personalization efforts.
Email Marketing Strategy Priorities
Improving engagement is the top priority for an email marketing strategy among survey respondents, even as it’s deemed one of the most challenging barriers to success.
Email A/B Testing Accuracy By Goal
A/B testing is the most common conversion rate optimization (CRO) method, and is also considered the most valuable. But when testing email campaigns, how long should you wait before deciding a winner?
Email Engagement With New Shoppers
This infographic illustrates the results of a Coherent Path survey of emails sent to new customers by 100 major retailers, such as CVS, Home Depot, and Ralph Lauren.
B2C Email Performance Benchmarks
Triggered email messages have repeatedly been shown to garner response rates higher than business-as-usual emails. But that doesn’t mean that you should expect all your Welcome campaigns to be read – or to even reach the inbox. A new study from Return Path finds that it’s a different type of message that’s most likely to be read.
Increasing Use Of Email By Generation
Email is a core form of communication among America’s youth, who generally expect to use email more in the future than they are now.
Adults’ Use Of First Email Address
Roughly half of American adults with access to a digital device and who use email continue to use the the first email address they ever had. That includes 37% who not only use that address but consider it their main account, per the YouGov report.
Most Effective Email Marketing Tactics
Email marketers are more interested in increasing conversions than in boosting sharing or growing their lists.
Most Annoying Things About Email Marketing
24% of respondents said they were annoyed by emails that indicated marketers had incorrect data about them.
Email List Segmentation Metrics
Email campaigns built on segmented lists outperformed non-segmented lists across metrics.
Email Marketing By Industry
Nine in 10 marketers in North America say they use email to engage their audience, according to a September 2016 survey by Winterberry Group and the Data & Marketing Association (DMA), the most commonly used channel over digital display, owned web content and search.
Email Is The Most Important Piece Of B2C Data
B2C decision-makers are more likely to see customers’ email addresses as valuable than their phone numbers or social logins.
Most Effective Email List-Growth Tactics
2% of marketing professionals said content marketing is the most effective email list growth tactic, while 50% said it’s the toughest to execute.
Email Innovation
Personalization has jumped to the top as the leading area of focus for company respondents this year, overtaking automation.
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