Email marketing has become a necessity for most businesses, regardless of the industry they play in. Just about anyone who is connected to the internet has an email, and this means that emails are arguably the most effective way to market in terms of reach.
As companies continue to evolve, so have their marketing needs. However, email marketing remains a notable part of that. In this article, we’ll examine some of the key email marketing statistics that can help guide your decision-making as you incorporate them into your overall marketing strategy.
Table of Contents
General Email Marketing Statistics
- At the moment, 1 in 2 media planners use Email marketing to drive conversion and results. That number is expected to surge even higher in 2022, with 22% of first-time media planners claiming that they’d like to try Email marketing (HubSpot Blog Research, 2021).
- Email marketing is being used by 64% of small businesses as part of their outreach efforts (Campaign monitor, 2021)
- Revenue from Email marketing is expected to hit $11 billion by 2023 (Statista, 2021)
- 4 billion people use their Emails daily. By 2025, that number is expected to hit 4.6 billion, making Email marketing second only to social media in terms of pure marketing reach (Statista, 2021).
- Every day, over 300 million Emails are sent across the world (Statista, 2021)
- 37% of brands plan to increase their budgets for Email marketing (Litmus, 2021)
- 33% of Email marketers send Emails at least once a week. 26% of them send several Emails monthly (Databox, 2022)
- The three most important Email marketing strategies are – recipient segmentation (78%), content personalization (72%), and automated Email campaigns (71%) (HubSpot Blog Research, 2021)
Email Marketing Benchmarks
Understanding Email marketing benchmarks is critical for any brand or marketer looking to optimize the results they get from this activity. Essentially, you need to know some of the best practices for Email marketing, as your recipients, industry, and more tend to change over time.
In its report, Campaign Monitor shared several important Email marketing benchmarks that should help to improve the effectiveness of your campaign in today’s world. Some of these important Email marketing statistics include:
Industry-Specific Benchmarks
As a marketer, you need to keep your eyes on several important metrics. These include:
- Open rates: The percentage of recipients who open your Emails
- Click-through rates: The percentage of Email recipients who click through your Email
- Click-to-open rates: The percentage of recipients who opened your Email, then clicked a link within it.
- Unsubscribe rates: The percentage of recipients who unsubscribed from your mailing list.
According to the report, here are some benchmarks based on different industries:
| Industry | Open Rate | Click-Through Rate | Click-to-Open Rate | Unsubscribe Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marketing & Advertising | 20.5% | 1.8% | 9.0% | 0.2% |
| Agriculture | 27.3% | 3.4% | 12.5% | 0.3% |
| Consumer Goods | 20% | 1.9% | 11.1% | 0.1% |
| Education | 28.5% | 4.4% | 15.4% | 0.2% |
| Financial Services | 27.1% | 2.4% | 10.1% | 0.2% |
| Healthcare | 23.7% | 3.0% | 23.4% | 0.3% |
| IT/Technology | 22.7% | 2.0% | 9.8% | 0.2% |
| Logistics | 23.4% | 2.0% | 11.7% | 0.35 |
| Media & Entertainment | 23.9% | 2.9% | 12.4% | 0.1% |
| Professional Services | 19.3% | 2.1% | 11.1% | 0.2% |
| Retail | 17.1% | 0.7% | 5.8% | 0.1% |
| Real Estate | 21.7% | 3.6% | 17.2% | 0.2% |
| Wellness & Fitness | 19.2% | 1.2% | 6.0% | 0.4% |
Benchmarks By Day
Another important factor for most Email marketers is to find the right days to send Emails. As Campaign Monitor shows, the above benchmarks, when grouped by days of the week, give the following:
| Day of the Week | Open Rate | Click-Through Rate | Click-to-Open Rate | Unsubscribe Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday | 20.3% | 2.1% | 10.1% | 0.1% |
| Monday | 22.0% | 2.3% | 10.6% | 0.1% |
| Tuesday | 21.8% | 2.4% | 10.8% | 0.1% |
| Wednesday | 21.8% | 2.3% | 10.7% | 0.1% |
| Thursday | 21.7% | 2.3% | 10.7% | 0.1% |
| Friday | 20.6% | 2.2% | 10.1% | 0.1% |
| Saturday | 20.5% | 2.1% | 10.1% | 0.1% |
As the table shows, the best days to send Emails depending on the benchmark you’re looking to optimize will includes:
- Best days for Email open rates: Monday (22.0%)
- Best days for Email click-through rates: Tuesday (2.4%)
- Best days for Email click-to-open rates: Wednesday and Tuesday (10.8%)
- Pretty much any day works if you’re trying to reduce unsubscriptions
B2B Email Marketing Statistics
If you operate a business that offers peripheral services to other businesses, Emails are undoubtedly a great way for you to reach out to new and prospective customers.
There’s a significant chance that your customers already use Emails themselves, so they understand the importance of this medium and will be more likely to engage with you. That said, here are some important Email marketing statistics for B2B companies to keep in mind:
- 81% of B2B Email marketers use Email newsletters as their primary content marketing medium (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
- 64% of B2B content marketers were able to effectively reach their goals in 2021 using Email marketing as a medium (HubSpot Blog Research, 2021)
- B2B marketers have been able to get the highest click-through rates on Emails announcing new products or features (HubSpot Blog Research, 2021)
- B2B marketers engage marketing automation to send triggered Emails and segment their recipients (Litmus, 2021)
B2C Email Marketing Statistics
Most businesses today are B2C – essentially, they provide services or goods directly to customers. Considering that many customers tend to have different objectives and needs, factoring their differences is critical when designing your Email marketing campaign.
Below are some important Email marketing statistics that B2C marketers would want to keep in mind:
- Marketing automation has been incorporated into about 87% of all B2C Email marketing campaigns (HubSpot Blog Research, 2021)
- 50% of customers move down the sales funnel at least once a month after being prompted by Emails (SaleCycle, 2022)
- On average, it is recommended that you send less than five Email campaigns weekly if you hope to optimize open and click-through rates (GetResponse, 2020)
- 60% of Emails related to services, consumer goods, and e-commerce include recipient personalization (Litmus, 2020)
- Welcome emails – which are sent to first-time customers – usually get opened by 8 out of 10 recipients (GetResponse, 2020)
- About 22% of Emails are opened within the first hour (GetResponse, 2020)
- 59% of B2C Email recipients claim that Emails have been important in influencing their purchases (SaleCycle, 2022)
Email Marketing Demographics
If you’re sending Email marketing campaigns, there’s a significant chance that you’re sending to customers across multiple demographics – age, gender location, religion, etc. Taking all of these demographics is important as you need to factor in their uniquenesses and differences in your entire campaign.
That said, here are some important Email marketing statistics in relation to demographics:
- 99% of all Email users check their inbox daily – some even check up to 20 times a day.
- Of those Email users, 58% check their Emails first thing in the morning (OptInMonster, 2020)
- 84% of consumers confirm that they check their Emails at least once daily (Pathwire, 2021)
- A survey conducted by Statista in 2021 showed that 35% of respondents have more than one Email address. 28% of respondents claim to have over four addresses.
- Consumers spend 10 seconds on average reading Emails from brands (Statista, 2021)
- 40% of consumers confirm that they have 50 Emails left unread in their inboxes (HubSpot, 2020)
- In determining whether to open an Email, most recipients consider whether they recognize the sender. They also consider whether they actually have the time to read the Email (Pathwire, 2021)
- 59% of millennials use their smartphones primarily to check their Emails. For Gen Z members, this number rises to 67% (Bluecore, 2021)
- 74% of Baby Boomers believe that Emails are the most personal channel for getting brand communications. 72% of Gen Xers believe the same thing – followed by 64% of Millennials and 60% of Gen Z (Bluecore, 2021)
- According to a report from Pathwire, accessibility is one of the key things to remember when creating Emails. To ensure this, marketers use catchy subject lines, improve access to buttons and links, and use short content.
Email Personalization Statistics
Over the past few years, personalization has become a critical part of Email marketing. Personalization helps to provide a more familiar touch to your Emails while ensuring that your customers relate better to the content being shared.
Several statistics show the importance of Email personalization. Some of them include:
- 77% of marketers confirm that they use Emails to send personalized content to their customers – especially paying customers (Statista, 2021)
- Personalization can be done in many ways, depending on the demographics you choose. For instance, 66% of marketers claim to personalize their Emails based on age (Codecrew, 2022)
- Emails with personalized subject lines can see up to a 26% surge in open rates (Campaign Monitor, 2021)
- Emails with only tier subject lines personalized have an average open rate of 7.4%, with click-through rates o 0.4%
- Emails with only the messages being personalized have an average open rate of 18.8% and a click-through rate of 2.1%
- 51% of marketers believe that the ability to segment Email lists is the most effective personalization tactic. At the same time, 50% of marketers believe that message individualization is the primary personalization strategy.
- 50% of companies believe that personalization can optimize organic interactions among tier recipients
- Brands that personalize their promotional marketing Emails have seen up to a 27% increase in unique click-through rates
- When your Emails are personalized toward each recipient, they will be more likely to generate action and engagement.
Conclusion: Email Marketing Isn’t Dead
Considering that there are so many ways to reach customers these days, it’s attractive for many marketers to believe that Email is dead and focus on channels like mobile and social media marketing. However, this is truly not the case.
Email marketing has continued to perform well, offering better returns on investment (ROI) for companies worldwide. With Email marketing, you can connect with customers where they already are; in their inboxes. And with more people getting familiar with their Emails and using those tools, it’s much easier to connect with your customers and keep them engaged.
All you need to do is understand how to craft your content in a way that appeals to your customers and which will hit their inboxes. Once this is done, you can optimize results significantly.
