6 Email Marketing Stats to Know in 2021

Over the last year, the pace of digital commerce has accelerated. More people than ever before are shopping online and is likely here to stay. So now is a good time as any to build and strengthen your relationship with your customer base through well-structured email marketing campaigns. But how do you reach your audiences in a way that sparks their attention and captures their interest?

The following  are six stats that will guide you in building out successful email marketing campaigns.

1. The pandemic sparked a 4.7% rise in open rates, which suggests that people are paying attention to promotional emails.

When lockdown orders in effect, people are relying on email and social media as their main forms of communication. To gain a better understanding of this trend, Acoustic, a marketing technology company, conducted a study of the pandemic’s impact on email marketing activity. 

What Acoustic found was from Jan. to May 2020, email marketing open rates increased by 4.7% from the previous year. 

This finding suggests that people may be paying closer attention to the messages landing in their inboxes. Despite rising open rates, however, the average click-through rate remained relatively unaffected.  Brands may be able to optimize these click-through rates by creating a value proposition that encourages readers to continue engaging.

If you’re looking to write more effective email subject lines, this write-up on how to write email marketing subject lines that increase your open rate will help.

2. Email volume is likely to increase, which may create increased competition for B2C marketers.

When using email as a marketing channel, brands will likely need to work harder to stand out. According to Litmus’s State of 2020 Email Marketing Survey, 54% of companies expect to send more email than in the previous year.

One reason for this trend, according to Litmus, is the current economic turbulence being experienced around the world. With job losses impacting consumers’ household budgets, brands are looking to get more value from their marketing efforts. 

Email marketing ROI is known to be higher than any other acquisition or engagement channel. Not to mention, email marketing aligns with all aspects of a company’s marketing strategy including lead generation, customer acquisition, customer retention, and more.

Given the recent rise in competition, every digital marketer is going to need to get creative with their brand communications to make their messaging count. If you’re looking for inspiration, this curation of six awesome email newsletter concepts will help. 

3. Personalization boosts response rates by more than 30%.

If you’re looking to deliver a compelling message to your audience, personalization is crucial. Recently, Backlinko and Pitchbox conducted a study of 12 million email campaigns and looked at personalization as a variable.

The study found that personalized subject lines boost response rates by 30.5%, and personalized message bodies increase response rates by 32.7%. In other words, people are more likely to engage with communications that they find relevant to their needs. Other studies have found that a personalized subject line can increase email open rates by 26%.

Even if you’re sending automated emails, it’s important to understand what your recipients care about, value, and want. If you’re looking for tools that can help, check out this list of email marketing tools to learn more about your audience. 

As you learn more about the people on your email list, you can build segmented campaigns and customize messaging in your marketing automation software. If you’re looking for ideas to implement, these five email marketing automation workflows are a good place to start.

Read more: 7 Benefits of Email Marketing That Impact Your Bottom Line

4. After 24 hours, the chance of an email being opened drops to under 1%.

If you’re using email to capture your audience’s attention, the timing of your outreach matters. 

In a recent analysis of 99,000 sent emails, SuperOffice found that 23% of all email opens occur within an hour of a message being sent, and over a 24 hour period the chances of that email being opened drops to under 1%.

With this in mind, it’s important to plan your email send times carefully. If you’re looking for a resource to help inform your strategy, this write-up on the best time to send an email will help.

5. 62% of emails are opened on a mobile device.

When you plan an email campaign, keep in mind that your audiences may not be browsing your content at a computer. According to Upland Adestra’s analysis of marketing automation data, 62% of email opens happen in a mobile environment.

For this reason, it’s important to keep your promotional emails simple. When using a mobile device, recipients are likely multitasking, distracted, or switching between activities. Not to mention, an image-heavy marketing campaign may take up too much of your audience’s limited bandwidth. For this reason, interactive emails may not be the right strategy.

Furthermore, every mobile device has user experience (UX) constraints. For instance, an iPhone will cut off a subject line over 32 characters. So if you’re creating segmented campaigns with a personalized subject line, be sure to pay attention to space constraints.

6. Only 8.5% of outreach emails receive a response. 

In another study, Backlinko found that most cold outreach emails go ignored. So if people don’t respond to your digital marketing communications, don’t feel bad. You’re most likely not doing anything wrong, and people may just be busy or mistake your outreach as spam.

Whether you’re sending advertising emails, welcome emails, promotional emails, or transactional emails, the best way to get a response is to be persistent. 

According to the same Backlinko study, sending just one follow-up note can boost replies by 65.8%. So if you’re a B2B marketer with a focus on one-to-one relationship building, it may make sense to connect with your recipients on social media platforms like Twitter.

For ideas on reaching out to someone after a non-response, take a look at these tips for sending a follow-up email without being annoying.

The theme for 2021 (and beyond) is ‘targeted’

One of the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic is the rise of mental fatigue. People are overwhelmed with information and communication while simultaneously remaining confined to their homes.

Beyond writing a personalized subject line and building segmented campaigns, make sure your messages are relevant, engaging, and valuable. Nobody has time to waste these days, and the results of your marketing campaign are not as important to your customers as they are to your marketing team. So if it’s a high conversion rate you’re after, no single stat on this list is going to be an all-inclusive solution. Instead, look to send targeted emails based on a holistic and individualized marketing strategy.

Your audience will notice, and appreciate, these efforts.

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