35 Face-Melting Email Marketing Stats for 2017

Let’s face it: outside of denim shorts, Doc Martens, and home-sewn SLAYER patches, it doesn’t get more metal than email marketing. 

There are mounds of KPIs to track and optimize for. It’s expensive. There’s segmentation. Time of day. Design. You have to sacrifice goats. CTA placement. Need I go on?

(This is the part where you say, “No, man. That’s quite enough. Turn down that racket and get to the stats already.”)

 

To help guide your email strategy, we’ve compiled a comprehensive list of useful email marketing statistics. Keep these in mind when you’re considering planning a new campaign or heading back to the drawing board with your existing email marketing funnel.

B2B Email Marketing Statistics

1. Email is the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences, behind only colleague recommendations and industry-specific thought leaders.
2. 86% of business professionals prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes.
3. CTRs are 47% higher for B2B email campaigns than B2C email campaigns.
4. 59% of B2B marketers say email is their most effective channel in terms of revenue generation.
5. Tuesday is the best day of the week to send email (according to 10 email marketing studies).

B2C Email Marketing Statistics

1. While 26% of SMBs polled use email marketing for sales, just 7% use email as a brand-building tool.
2. Only about 30% of US retail email list subscribers have actually made a purchase from the retailer whose email list they subscribed to.
3. Welcome emails are incredibly effective: on average, 320% more revenue is attributed to them on a per email basis than other promotional emails.
4. 80% of retail professionals indicate that email marketing is their greatest driver of customer retention (the next closest channel? Social media, identified by just 44% of those same professionals).
5. 77% of people prefer to get permission-based promotional messages via email (versus direct mail, text, phone, or social media).

Email Marketing Device & Demographic Statistics

1. Men and women are equally likely to convert from an email opened on a desktop — but women are more likely to convert on a tablet, and men are more likely to convert on a phone.
2. 73% of millennials identify email as their preferred means of business communication.
3. The Apple iPhone leads email client market share with 31%, followed by Gmail at 22% as of May 2017 (calculations based on 1.29 billion opens).
4. When a prospect or customer who opens an email on a mobile device opens that same email again on another device, they are 65% more likely to click-through to your site/offering.
5. People SAY they prefer HTML emails, but plain-text emails actually get higher open rates.

Spam & Segmentation Statistics

1. 49% of digital marketers indicate that the Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL) has had no discernable impact on their company’s email marketing program.
2. The average number of legitimate business emails received each day has remained static since 2015, but the number of spam emails that bypass security filters (spam that actually hits your inbox) has risen from 12 emails per day in 2015 to 16 emails per day in 2017. 
3. Nonprofits lose about $15k/year in donations due to spam filters blocking fundraising campaign emails from prospects’ inboxes.
4. Segmented email campaigns have an open rate that is 14.32% higher than non-segmented campaigns.
5. Click-throughs are 100.95% higher in segmented email campaigns than non-segmented campaigns.

Email Marketing Volume Statistics

 

1. The number of email users worldwide is forecasted to rise to 2.9 billion by 2019.
2. The number of email users in the US is projected to grow to 244.5 million by the end of 2017, and 254.7 million by 2020.
3. Nearly 105 billion emails are sent each day; this number is expected to reach 246 billion before 2020.
4. The use of emoji in email marketing messages increased 775% from 2015 to 2016.
5. The percentage of emails containing GIFs rose from 5.4% in 2015 to 10.3% in 2016.

General Email Marketing Statistics

1. 49% of businesses use some form of email automation.
2. Pet and animal services has the highest email open rate — people love their pets!
3. In the UK, every one pound spent on email marketing has an ROI of 38 pounds; in the US, it’s $44.
4. According to the DMA, the four most important email marketing metrics (as identified by advertisers) are: CTR, Conversion rate, Open rate, and ROI.
5. Checking email is a complementary activity. People do it while watching TV (69 percent), in bed (57 percent), and on vacation (79 percent). Bonus points if you’re looking at that JCrew Gmail ad while doing all three!
6. Using the word “Donate” in your subject line can reduce open rate by 50% or more.
7. The average email opt-in rate across all verticals is 1.95%.
8. The average open rate for businesses in the Daily Deals industry is 15% – the cross-industry average? 20%.
9. 28% of consumers would like to receive promotional emails more than once per week.
10. A study of 1 billion emails revealed that video emails see CTRs 96% higher than non-video emails.

Is our list missing any valuable kernels of email-marketing wisdom? Let us know!

About the Author

Allen Finn is a content marketing specialist and the reigning fantasy football champion at WordStream. He enjoys couth menswear, dank eats, and the dulcet tones of the Wu-Tang Clan. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.