20 Shocking Email Marketing Stats All Business Owners Should Know

With 2016 underway, you’d think SnapChat, Vine or some other new and shiny platform would steal the spotlight, but for those of us in the marketing world, these compelling email marketing stats prove that email as a channel is far from obsolete. In fact, it should be a primary facet of your marketing plan now and moving forward.

Email marketing is a powerful vehicle for delivering messages directly to your target audience. Social media has its role in the marketing machine (as well it should), but you have to build your audiences, post constantly and run the risk of not everyone seeing your posts.

For us, email marketing is (and will continue to be) the most important channel any business can use to continually get their name in front of their past and present clients. It’s consistent, targeted, effective, inexpensive and used by over half of the world’s population.

So take a look at these 20 shocking email marketing stats for 2015 and tell me how your business can survive another minute without using email marketing as a primary revenue driver.

1) Email marketing yields an average 4,300% return on investment for businesses in the United States. (Direct Marketing Association)

2) Companies using email to nurture leads generate 50% more sales-ready leads and at 33% lower cost. And nurtured leads, on average, produce a 20% increase in sales opportunitiescompared to non-nurtured leads. (Hubspot)

3) Small business owners estimate that getting an extra hour in their day back from doing their own email marketing (and other activities) is worth $273/hour. (Constant Contact)

4) For every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return on investment is $44.25. (ExactTarget)

5) Marketers consistently ranked email as the single most effective tactic for awareness, acquisition, conversion, and retention. (Gigaom Research)

6) Email conversion rates are three times higher than social media, with a 17% higher value in the conversion. (McKinsey & Company)

7) Email is nearly 40 times better than Facebook and Twitter at acquiring customers. (McKinsey & Company)

8) 70% of people say they always open emails from their favorite companies. (ExactTarget)

9) 95% of those who opt into email messages from brands find these messages somewhat or very useful. (Salesforce)

10) You have just 3-4 seconds to grab your readers’ attention and interest them enough to open and read your email. (Litmus)

11) In Q1 2014, more email was opened on iPhones (38%) than all desktops combined (34%). (MovableInk)

12) 64% of decision makers read emails via mobile device. (EmailExpert)

13) Breakdown of how much time people spend reading email on desktop vs. mobile:  (MovableInk)

Desktop:
0-3 seconds: 37.88%
3-15 seconds: 24.67%
15+ seconds: 37.45%

Mobile:
0-3 seconds: 41.01%
3-15 seconds: 24.93%
15+ seconds: 34.06%

14) 91% of consumers check their email at least once per day on their smartphone, making it the most used functionality. (ExactTarget)

15) Using marketing automation can increase conversion rates by over 50%. (Aberdeen Group)

16) Personalized promotional mailings have 29% higher unique open rates and 41% higher unique click rates than non-personalized mailings. (Experian)

17) Companies that use email list segmentation saw 39% higher open rates and 28% lower unsubscribe rates. (Lyris Annual Email Optimizer Report)

18) Emails with social sharing buttons increase click through rates by 158%. (Nonprofit Hub)

19) The two biggest factors influencing open rates are the organization the email is from (64%) and the subject line (47%). (Chadwick Martin Bailey)

20) If an email does not display correctly, 71.2% will delete it immediately. (BlueHornet)

Armed with the knowledge of these shocking email marketing stats, how much do you plan to change your existing approach to email marketing? And if you need help getting back your day, we can help automate your email marketing for you.

BUY your tickets – Noma Bar at Typo Circle

Illustrator and designer Noma Bar will give the next Typo Circle talk, on November 27

Bar’s work will be familiar to most CR readers as we have kept a close watch on his career to date. Now’s the chance (if you live in London or nearby) to hear him talk about his work as part of the Typo Circle‘s regular lecture series.

Tickets are £10 for members (£6 for student members) or £16 for non-members (£10 student non-members). Buy them here

The talk is at JWT, 1 Knightsbridge Green, London SW1X 7NW, on November 27 at 7pm