Email marketing is alive and kicking in 2019. To prove it, we’ve compiled 30 handy email marketing statistics to shape your strategy.

Keep these email stats handy for those times you need to persuade your boss that email is a crucial channel for your business.

 

Email marketing statistics

Let’s get started with the latest email revenue and ROI statistics. Ultimately these are the things your CEO will care about most:

  • Email generates around £29bn retail sales annually (Marketing Week).
  • 73% of marketers rate email as the number one digital channel for ROI (Marketing Week).
  • ROI for email increased from an estimated £30.03 for every £1 spent in 2016 to £32.28 in 2017 (DMA).
  • 86% of marketers say email is ‘important’ or ‘very important’ to their multichannel marketing strategy (DMA)…
  • …but email marketing only receives 10% of digital channel budgets (Econsultancy).
  • 83% of marketers consider their email marketing strategy to be ‘somewhat’ to ‘very’ successful when compared with their competitors (Ascend2).

 
Further reading: How to Create a Winning Email Marketing Strategy

Email user statistics

Email gives great ROI on average, but is it the right channel to reach your audience? Here’s what the figures tell us:

  • 58 percent of millennials say that email is their preferred way to be contacted by a brand (Adobe).
  • Email use worldwide will top 3 billion users by 2020 (The Radicati Group).
  • Despite increased use of many other forms of communication such as instant chat and social networking, email continues to be the leading form of business communication (The Radicati Group).

 

Devices and email client statistics

Mobile continues to grow, while Gmail appears to be winning the battle of the email clients.

  • Gmail has 1 billion active users worldwide (Statista).
  • Two-thirds of emails are read on mobile devices (Marketing Land).
  • Three-quarters of Gmail users access their accounts on mobile devices (TechCrunch).
  • Of emails opened on mobile devices, 58% are opened on an iPhone (Marketing Land).
  • More than half of Android users spent at least 15 seconds with their mobile email, while 40 percent of iOS users spent three seconds or less (Marketing Land).
  • 66% of email unsubscribes occur between 5 and 10 pm (Tomasz Tunguz).

 

Email personalisation statistics

How many marketers are using personalisation in their email marketing and what success are they having?

  • 38% of companies are not undertaking any kind of personalisation (Econsultancy).
  • Only 7% of consumers are likely to engage in marketing communications that reference their birthday in the subject line (Pure360)
  • Just 8% would be likely to engage more with a retailer if they addressed them by name in their marketing (Pure360).
  • Nearly half of consumers would be likely to engage more with retailers that send offers that are relevant and interesting to them (Pure360).
  • 51% of marketers say the ability to segment email lists is one of their most effective personalisation tactics (Ascend2).
  • 50% of marketers say the ability to individualise campaign messages one of their most effective personalisation tactics (Ascend2).
  • Segmented and targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue (DMA).
  • 42% of marketers do not send targeted email messages (MarketingProfs).

 

Email engagement statistics

Our look at personalisation statistics has revealed that basic personalisation is not that engaging. That said, marketers are getting great results from sending relevant messages to specific segments.

How are engagement levels looking in other areas of email marketing?

  • 86% of consumers would like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with at least monthly, and 15% would like to get them daily (Statista).
  • Basket abandonment emails have a 40.5% open rate (eMarketer).
  • 54% of marketers say increasing engagement rate is their top email marketing priority (Ascend2).
  • 11 am ET has the highest clickthrough rate for email sends (HubSpot).
  • As the number of images in an email increases, the clickthrough rate of the email tends to decrease (HubSpot).
  • 64% of people prefer rich text emails (HubSpot).
  • Almost half of marketers say they sometimes test alternate subject lines to optimize email performance (MarketingProfs).

 

Takeaway

We hope this post has equipped you with plenty of email statistics to support your strategy in the year to come.

To learn more about the hot trends that are shaping email marketing in 2019, get your hands on our email marketing trends guide below.

Email Marketing Trends 2018 Report