It’s no secret that marketing, as we know, is always changing. Email marketing is only one facet of the entire marketing game, and it’s experienced its shares of ups and downs. One thing that remains true about email marketing is its power and control over the digital marketing world.
No one can argue that email marketing is still a powerful strategy for generating attention, creating an audience, and scaling a business. With that comes some incredible email marketing stats that continue to show us how vital email is in the grand scheme of things.
Here are some of the most eye-popping email marketing stats of 2020 and beyond.
1. More than half the world's population will use email by 2023.
At one time, it wasn’t uncommon to send ten emails and have a 100% open rate as well as a 100% response rate. Not everyone was using email, and the ones who were using it trusted it without question. We weren’t inundated with spam and other factors that made us distrust email.
In 2019, email grew to 3.9 billion, and it’s expected to grow to 4.3 billion users by 2023. That is officially half of the world's population using email for some purpose.
What this shows us is that there is an incredible opportunity for those who are willing to reach out and grab it. Your audience is on the other side of that send button.
2. Billions of emails get sent daily.
It’s expected for the daily email number to increase to around 347.3 billion by 2022. That number is ridiculous for a few reasons.
First, it shows you that email marketing isn’t going anywhere. When paid ads first came on the scene, everyone thought that was the end of email marketing. What happened?
Over the past three or four years, we’ve seen a steady decrease in the success of paid ads on platforms like Facebook. At the same time, email marketing continues to grow.
3. More and more people believe in the power of email.
80% of business owners and professionals believe that email marketing is a significant driving force in their business.
Why is that? We think it’s because email creates retention with an audience. You have a lot of opportunities to build trust and rapport with your subscribers through email marketing.
Throughout this whole process, you aren’t simply selling yourself over and over, as many marketers do in other industries. Email is a slow and patient game that works well for those who are willing to play it that way.
4. Search can’t compare to email marketing.
Want to hear a staggering statistic? The average return on a Google Ad is two dollars for every one you spend ($2-1).
The average return on email marketing is between 37 and 42-1.
How’s that for a pattern interrupt?
Many of us don’t see email marketing as a serious ROI generating strategy in business, but it is.
5. Social media can’t compare to email marketing.
We’ve talked about this a bit, but it’s worth mentioning again. Search ads cannot compete with email marketing, and neither can social media.
On Facebook, people are shut off to everyone wanting to engage with them that most have turned away from the platform for business. Truthfully, if you want to stick to any social media for business, you should leverage LinkedIn. But that should all come secondary to email marketing.
6. Most businesses communicate via email.
Both consumers and businesses still use email to communicate. The most important factor to keep in mind is how they often communicate with people outside the organization. So that is why you need to keep email as a popular marketing strategy.
72% of people use email as their primary point of contact when conducting business. If you’re trying to sell something to someone, you’ll want to use email as your way of getting through to them.
7. More transactions occur through email than you think.
A case study by Monetate found that 4.24% of email marketing traffic will make a purchase compared to 2.49% of search engine traffic and .59% of traffic from social media - The American Genius
This statistic is mind-blowing because it shatters what most people believe about email marketing. Many people think that email is the slow and dying process of sending newsletters to people who will never reply or read the email.
People who believe this are not doing email marketing right. This statistic shows us the power of email.
The people who are actually going to buy something from you are on your email subscriber list; these are your buyers. They’re not on your social media page, and they’re not always in the search engine.
At some point, they decided to subscribe to your newsletter because they were interested in knowing more about what you have to say. That means they wanted to do business with you, but they might need some more time to build rapport.
That is what email marketing is all about; it doesn’t always mean it has to be a slow process.
8. You need to optimize for mobile-first.
Let’s get real; we all know that mobile optimization is no longer an option; it’s a standard. In 2019, 62% of emails were opened on a mobile device, so we’re going with the majority. When you’re designing your emails and writing your copy, you should assume you’re writing to a mobile audience.
9. People actually enjoy receiving emails.
Another huge misconception is that people don’t like receiving emails. In fact, if you take the right approach with your email marketing people enjoy receiving your emails when they’re relevant.
69% of customers say that they’re influenced to buy something based on an email they received. Why is that email marketing statistic important?
We think it’s important because it shows that email marketing plays a role in the consumer buying process. Even if you feel that your efforts haven’t been living up to the hype. Somewhere out there is a person who is currently sitting on a decision. You might be able to send them the right personalized email to tip them over the edge.
10. Emojis are becoming more popular in emails.
Ah yes, all you need to do is throw an emoji into your email and boom; you’ll increase your open rate by 56%.
Wait, you thought we were joking? No, we’re serious. According to Campaign Monitor, emails with emojis in the subject line have a 56% higher open rate when compared to plain text. It’s important that you don’t come off as spammy, so we don't suggest overdoing it.
11. The subject line is the most important part of your email.
Continuing with the trend here, you want to pay close attention and spend the most time on your subject line. Many email marketers and business owners struggle with getting their subscribers to open their emails, so you must get the subject line right. Otherwise, everything else is a bust.
Emails with personalized subject lines get opened 26% more, and 82% of marketers keep the subject line at less than 60 characters. Keep that in mind next time you’re blowing through your subject like it doesn’t matter!
12. Spam is leaving the door wide open for “real” email marketing.
It seems like the spam box gets more and more full each year. Do you want to know why? It’s because email providers are cracking down. Business owners are getting smarter. And marketers think they can “fast-track” their way to the top with spammy email copy.
It doesn’t work that way, and it hasn’t since 1997.
69% of email recipients can tell by the subject line if an email is spam. This statistic means that they can simply look at one sentence and determine if your genuine or not. With that, 45% of all emails are considered spam, so you can understand why we’ve become so good at detecting it.
Listen, you can’t do a lot of things in emails anymore. You shouldn’t talk about get rich quick schemes. You can’t promise anything you can't deliver on. Don’t try to sell someone something of no value. As a matter of fact, just send a blank email and let them figure it out. (haha j/k)
But really, don’t be a spammer. You need to provide value in every email you send, and that needs to be clear right off the bat. Take this as a good example:
“The KEY TO MARKETING SUCCESS lies within: Ending in 24 HOURS!!!” or “Most marketers never reach their goals without a mentor: Do you have a mentor yet?”
If you were selling business coaching, these might be two examples of email subject lines you would use.
The first one sounds like a million other useless emails. So even if you’re providing a ton of value inside, it won’t matter because the email will never get opened. (it’ll be in the spam folder)
The second subject line appeals to a person's emotions and makes them feel like they need what is inside the email. It does this without appearing spammy or “false prophet-y.”
13. Segmentation and personalization are becoming the new norm.
Some people will say that email segmentation is a new thing, but we don’t believe so. People have been personalizing and segmenting their audience for a long time, but now it’s becoming the standard. You can’t have a successful email marketing campaign if you’re sending the same email to 10,000 people, it's not possible.
You need to segment your email list based on different factors such as demographics, gender, age, opt-in method, time of day, and so on.
Users experience a 760% increase in revenue from segmented campaigns. You need to break apart your audience because they have different interests. How would you feel if you went to a restaurant and they only offered you one item?
Later on, you find out that they had 15 other options, but they didn’t bother to offer those options to you. And they forced you to have the chicken when you wanted steak.
That’s what a lot of email marketers do. They have a variety of different services that are sure to please someone, but they’re only pushing one at a time to everyone.
When you split your audience and personalize the emails, it allows you to give that person exactly what they need at the right time.
14. Engaged email recipients turn into share happy referrals.
According to Quicksprout, email subscribers are 3.9 times more likely to share your content on social media. What does that mean for you? It means that if someone chose to subscribe to you, it says that they’re interested in you. If they’re interested, they will likely share all your content and possibly become a “raving fan.”
It’s essential to treat your email subscriber list like an exclusive club. Make sure you’re offering special perks to convince people to subscribe. And show current club members some love by providing them with the value they want.
We would recommend using a social media tracking tool so you can find mentions of your business on social as well. If you find that someone shared your content or said something nice about you on Facebook, you might want to gift them a reward.
Or, if someone is out there bad-mouthing you, than what? This provides you with an opportunity to address the situation and stomp on it before allowing it to get worse.
Final Thoughts
There are hundreds upon hundreds of email marketing stats that continue to impress and amaze us. What amazes us is the fact that people are still not willing to build an email list after watching others succeed for years. (don’t be those people!)