Email marketing is one of the most common ways of attracting new customers to your business and growing your brand. Those who invest the necessary time into this practice quickly learn that email marketing comes with many benefits for business owners and clients. That is, of course, if the marketing campaign is done right and provides value to potential customers. Value for customers can come in many forms ranging from offering free stuff to providing informative newsletters.
When done properly, email marketing is a proven method of acquiring new customers and encouraging existing ones to continue engaging with your brand and services. In order to better figure out what email marketing can bring to the table, we recently took a closer look into the matter and discovered some very interesting stats. We think it might come in handy to anyone who is seriously thinking about starting a new email campaign. Also, make sure to check this guide by Drip to learn about automated email marketing campaigns.
Email Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing
The rapid growth of platforms like Facebook and Twitter has made social media marketing a very solid option for business owners. In fact, the current popularity of social media has lead many to believe this to be the best marketing method available right now. Well, that’s not quite the case. During our research, we have learned that email marketing continues to be the most reliable method.
Truth is, most people would prefer not to see any type of advertising while browsing platforms like Facebook or Twitter. Social media ads tend to be very obtrusive and distracting. And users generally ignore them. We’ve learned that as much as 72% of people actually prefer to get emails related to promotional content rather than being bombarded with offers on social media.
Needless to say, that’s not surprising as with an email you always have a choice whether you want to open it and see the offer or not. On the other hand, social media ads do not come with this benefit and you’ll be forced to see the promotional content whether you like it or not. As a direct consequence, a lot more people (up to 66%) end up making an online purchase as a result of email marketing.
Mobile Devices Are the Best Platform for Email Marketing
One of the biggest mistakes you can make when planning an email marketing campaign is not prioritizing mobile devices. About two-thirds of all emails are now opened and read on a smartphone or tablet, with only about 34% of users reading their email via desktop. Unfortunately, not everyone is aware of that fact because there are still many email marketing campaigns that are not optimized for mobile.
Failing to make emails mobile-friendly is almost guaranteed to lead users to delete them pretty much immediately. No less than 70% of users delete emails that don’t render well on their mobile device, which is not surprising. Despite accounting for over half of all email opens, only one in three clicks within emails comes from a mobile device. This isn’t very surprising either. If the emails are not rendered properly the user either won’t be able to click on the links or won’t bother to, since they can’t see all the information.
Our data also shows that 74% of smartphone users prefer to check their emails via their mobile device, with 23% of them often opening the email again at a later time. It’s not uncommon for people to open an email on mobile for the first time and then make a purchase from a desktop. Again, this could have something to do with many emails not rendering properly on mobile, which is why optimization is so important.
What Counts as Spam Email?
Everybody is very familiar with spam messages, which is why users are extremely apprehensive about opening emails that contain certain words or phrases. When building an email marketing campaign, business owners should do their best to avoid the following:
- Percent Off
- Make Money
- Collect
- Clearance
- Claim
Using any of the above in your emails is very likely to get them deleted, however, that’s not the only way. Our data shows that almost 46% of users will see your messages as spam if you send them too often. Meanwhile, over 36% of them did not like receiving emails from services that they didn’t subscribe to. Another major problem is irrelevant content, with 31.6% of people viewing promotional content that’s not related to their interests as straight up spam.
Return on Investment
Email marketing campaigns are sometimes aimed exclusively at making a certain brand more popular. However, more often than not the goal is to acquire new customers that would be interested in purchasing certain products or services. After all, there are some costs involved when creating an email marketing campaign. Business owners need to be able to see a solid return on their investment sooner or later.
As it turns out, email marketing is actually very cost-effective. You can expect to quickly recuperate your money and make a profit in no time. On average, for every $1 spent when using email marketing business owners made $38 back. In some situations (18%), the ROI can reach as high as $76 or possibly even more. The ROI you can expect is only partially tied to the quality of the camping. The very important factor is the price and quantity of the products and services bought by the users.
Research Is Key
There are a lot of steps you can take in order to make sure that your email marketing campaign is successful. And creating the campaign itself is only the beginning. Monitoring analytics and modifying the campaign based on user interests is often necessary for those looking for long-term gain. Equally important is being up to date with current trends. This can give you a good indication of what kinds of things customers like and don’t like to see in their emails.
We already discussed a few of the most interesting stats uncovered by the research made by Everycloud but there’s much more where that came from. The infographic below will give you a more in-depth look at absolutely everything you need to know about email marketing.
