The State of Email Marketing

Article first published December 2017, updated July 2019.

Email continues to dominate digital marketing, especially since it’s a dependable, top-performing channel. 

Let’s take a look at the biggest objectives for marketers, the most effective tactics, and the email marketing stats you should be watching.

How to succeed at email marketing

So how do the marketers who post impressive results do it? How can you join the league of savvy marketers who are crushing it with email marketing? Here are three of the most important factors to put into place:

Know your objectives.

Before you launch your email marketing campaign, define your objectives. What do you want to achieve with your email campaign? Is it to:

• Build or grow your email list?
• Promote a product and drive sales?
• Engage with your audience?
• Nurture your leads?

By clearly defining your objectives, you are then in a better position to put the second factor in place.

Determine your KPIs.

Key performance indicators, commonly called KPIs, are the tangibles that you can measure to determine the performance of your email campaign.

Common KPIs include but are not limited to:

• Open rates
• Click-through rates
• Revenue generated
• Number of new subscribers

Your KPIs are determined by the nature of your business and the objectives of your email campaign.

Design award-winning campaigns.

In order to increase the chances of your campaigns achieving their goals, you have to design them with email marketing best practices in mind. Here are the top five:

List segmentation

Segmentation means grouping customers with common attributes together. This could be age, gender, geographical location, position at work, and anything else that helps you deal with each segment more efficiently.

Personalization

Segmentation helps you send personalized campaigns. According to research, personalization can increase open rates by as much as 26%. In order to personalize your email campaigns, you have to gather relevant data about your customers.

Automation

As you can see, a successful email marketing campaign is impossible to pull off manually. It takes automation to streamline and run an efficient and effective email campaign. This is why email marketing platforms like Campaign Monitor are indispensable in the modern age of marketing.

Testing and optimization

Every successful marketer knows the power of A/B testing. By testing the important elements of your email campaign, you get insight into what works and what doesn’t. This then enables you to refine your process methods, and designs, resulting in your campaigns become more robust and successful.

Responsive design

We are living in a generation where mobile devices are quickly becoming the preferred medium for consuming emails. As an email marketer, you have to ensure that every email template you use is mobile-responsive.

So how are other email marketers performing with this system in place? Find out in this insightful infographic.

The State of Email Marketing

What strategies and tactics are having the greatest impact on email marketing to consumers? To find out, Campaign Monitor in partnership with Ascend2 fielded the state of email marketing survey.

89% of marketers consider their email marketing strategy successful.

Most important objectives

• 1st: Conversions
• 2nd: Click-throughs
• 3rd: List growth

Most useful performance metrics

• ROI: 35%
• Conversions: 47%
• List growth: 49%
• Click-throughs: 57%

Most effective email marketing tactics

• Personalization: 57%
• List segmentation: 37%
• Automated campaigns: 34%
• Testing and optimization: 30%
• Responsive design: 29%

How successful is your email marketing strategy?

• Very successful: 42%
• Somewhat successful: 47%
• Somewhat unsuccessful: 10%
• Very successful: 1%

87% of marketers say email marketing performance is increasing.

About the survey

Number of employees

• 0 – 50: 17%
• 50 – 500: 37%
• 500+: 46%

Job title

• Non-management: 19%
• Owner/CEO: 23%
• Manager/VP: 58%

Put the power of email marketing and automation to work for your company today. It’s never been a better time to be a marketer.

Wrap up

Even though email is one of the older methods of digital communication, it’s still one of the most valuable marketing channels you can use to engage customers. As these email marketing stats show, the future of email marketing is still bright.

In the meantime, check out our article on getting started with email marketing.  It’s full of tips and guidance to get you started the right way.

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