Some of the Latest Email Stats, Studies, and Strategies to Help You Boost Email Engagement
Some of the Latest Email Stats, Studies, and Strategies to Help You Boost Email Engagement
Email engagement is one of the most important factors that affects deliverability. Are you interested in what’s driving fantastic email engagement for others? Here are some of the latest email-marketing studies and statistics that speak to how email is used by marketers today. And we’ve included some specific engagement-boosting strategies that you could incorporate into your own email-marketing program.
Email Is Alive and Thriving
Email use and the volume of emails landing in your subscribers’ inboxes is on the rise. Here are some of the latest numbers from The Radicati Group’s Email Statistics Report, 2016-2020:
- The number of email users worldwide is estimated to be more than 2.6 billion in 2016, which is expected to increase to more than 3.0 billion in 2020.
- Email volume is also expected to increase by 4.6% annually over the next four years, with more than 257.7 billion business and consumer emails sent and received daily by the end of 2020.
- Use of mobile email is also predicted to continue to grow, with 65% of worldwide users accessing their email via a mobile device.
We found further support of these trends of increasing email usage and volume of emails sent in the 2016 Bronto Commerce Marketing Report. In this study, 64% of study respondents said that they intend to increase the volume of email they send in 2016, whereas only 4% intend to decrease their email-send volume. About 300 e-commerce marketers were surveyed for this report.
These e-commerce marketers also shared insight into what email-marketing practices they are currently using. Some of the most commonly used e-commerce tactics included:
- Segmentation (83%)
- Welcome series (74%)
- Remailing (64%)
- A/B testing (62%)
- Abandoned-cart recovery (59%)
- Website pop-up sign-up (56%).
Tactics most commonly cited for future use included:
- VIP/loyalty campaigns (59%)
- Dynamic content (58%)
- Personalized post-purchase series (55%)
- Personalized post-purchase message (52%)
- Win-back series (49%)
- Transactional messages with promotional content (49%).
Study Shows That Triggered Emails Engage But Still Not Widely Used
Although triggered emails demonstrate higher engagement metrics compared to other promotional email campaigns, they are still not widely used by companies. This was the conclusion of a Yesmail report that analyzed data gathered from 24 billion emails sent in 2015.
Triggered emails are messages sent in response to specific subscriber actions (e.g., welcoming new sign-ups, reminding customers about an abandoned cart, updating an account, confirming a purchase) or events (birthdays and anniversaries). Welcome campaigns were the most frequently sent triggered emails, with 72.2% of companies deploying them, followed by reactivation (31.6%) and abandoned-cart emails (21.4%). Here are some of the top findings from this report.
Compared to promotional emails sent by companies, triggered emails generated:
- Higher open rates (28.7% vs. 14.5%)
- Higher click-to-open rates (22.5% vs. 11.1%)
- Higher click rates (6.5% vs. 1.6%).
Triggered emails may account for only 2.3% of all emails sent in this study; however, they resulted in:
- 4.4% of all the opens
- 9% of all clicks
- 9.7% of all revenue.
Welcome Emails Are Great for Driving Engagement
Listrak analyzed the usage of welcome campaigns from top retail companies to see how they interacted with new subscribers:
- Retailers made an average of $1.07 per welcome email sent
- A majority of top-performing retailers sent more than one welcome email: In this study, 64% sent a series of three welcome emails and 18% sent a series of two emails
- 86% of top-performing retailers send a discount in the first email
- Sending welcome emails promptly is critical because 45% of first-time purchases occurred with the first day of subscribing and 92.5% occurred within one week.
During spring 2016, Campaigner conducted an online survey of 150 e-commerce retailers regarding how they used welcome emails to engage their new subscribers:
- 62% of the respondents sent a welcome email to new subscribers within 24 hours of signing up
- 19% of the respondents sent a welcome email after 24 hours, but within one week of signing up
- Only 7% of the respondents didn’t send a welcome email
- The most common methods for getting prospects to join an email list included: offering news/content (55%), promotions (49%), and discount on a purchase (23%)
- 52% of respondents said that less than 20% of new subscribers engaged with the first welcome email message
- Deliverability is a deal breaker, according to 47% of respondents, who said that landing in a spam folder is the most damaging thing for an e-commerce retailer
- Email send time is important: 35% of respondents said that sending in the morning (8 a.m. to 11 a.m.) is the best time of day to get a response, and 25% said midday (11 a.m. to 2 p.m.)
- 87% of respondents included images in their welcome emails, whereas 26% included videos
- More than half of the respondents considered personalization and segmentation to be the most important tactics for driving conversions
- 60% of respondents said that they weren’t making the most of their welcome emails.
Check out this infographic from Campaigner that provides tips for email marketers on how to make a great first impression.
Emojis in Email – Do They Drive Engagement?
Emojis are popping up in inboxes more and more these days, so we thought these stats from the Appboy Emoji Study: The Rise and Rise of Emoji Marketing are relevant to email marketers:
- Emails with emojis in the subject line see higher open rates, increasing by 15% year over year
- 64% of survey respondents said that they like emojis
- Respondents who were 25 to 44 years old were more positive about emojis in text messages, whereas those 45 years or older were more open to emojis in emails
- Emojis in email subject lines don’t seem to have an impact on click-through rates, which means that marketers need to focus on finding ways to take advantage of subscriber engagement and to drive more conversions.
Looking for effective email strategies to boost engagement and drive conversions? Contact us today and we’ll discuss how FulcrumTech can help you get the most out of your email-marketing campaigns.