Email Marketing

Email Marketing Statistics and Trends

doug@websitemagazine.com (Doug Hughes) — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Email marketing remains one of the most effective ways businesses reach and engage with their customers. As we enter 2023, understanding the latest email marketing statistics can help businesses optimize their campaigns and achieve greater success. Here are 10 email marketing statistics for 2023:

Battle Cart Abandonment with Email Marketing

Scott Cohen — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Companies have reportedly lost over $18 billion in revenue, with products worth over $4 trillion being abandoned in 2017. To make matters worse, cart abandonment rates have significantly increased from 62.30% in 2014 to 76.9% in Q2 2017. By industry, here are some more numbers:

Email Marketers' First Assignment: Brush Up on the Basics

EJ McGowan — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 06:00:00 GMT

It is that time of year again! Students are stocking up on supplies and gearing up for back to school season this month.

A new school year provides a fresh start for students to try new things and put their best foot forward, and marketers can take a similar approach with their campaigns and best practices to make an A+ impression on customers.

In order to make the grade, email marketers must make sure they are acing the basics. Reviewing these common mistakes can help marketers avoid pitfalls and successfully craft email marketing campaigns worthy of top grades.

Earn an A+ by Utilizing A/B Split Testing

Similar to a formal education, testing is just as important for email marketers. Specifically, A/B split testing allows email marketers to test their subject line, images, copy and even time of day. As audiences grow, their preferences could change. The A/B split testing method should be the core tenet of all of a marketer's campaigns, as it allows the ability to determine readers' preferences and what tone the email should take.

All students should spend ample time before an exam studying. Similarly, email marketers should spend time preparing and testing their emails. To fully utilize A/B testing, create small groups and send test emails out to see which headline has a higher open rate. This lets marketers watch these variations go head-to-head, in real-time, to determine which is most effective for each campaign. A/B testing will also give meaningful metrics to better understand interests, preferred time of day and even determine if subscribers respond to terms like "act now!" Using this method on a small group of subscribers before sending to an entire list can make all the difference in ROI.

The ABC's of Email Transparency

Students don't like pop quizzes. This gives no time to study and often includes unexpected surprises. Like pop quizzes, no subscriber likes to be led on and not aware of what is happening. With the current market so inundated with products and services, many marketers forget that their messages can stand out simply by keeping customers happy. The mistakes email marketers make are using deceptive language and not following through with promises. An example of this is sending a survey out and saying something is free when it is not, or not disclosing that subscriber information is being transferred to a third party.

Good teachers often provide a syllabus upfront with a schedule of upcoming exams and projects. To mimic this approach, keep headlines straightforward and be clear about the entire process. Tell subscribers how long a survey will take them, when coupons and promotions end and what the next steps are to complete action items. Being transparent will build trust and loyalty and, in the end, create more engagement and sales. By using deceiving language, subscribers can become aggravated and unsubscribe after receiving false hopes of promotions or discounts.

Raise Your Hand if You Want Social Media Integration

Teachers don't rely on only one teaching method. Everyone learns differently and in order to accommodate the class, they have to use different styles and techniques to help a larger number of students. A common mistake that marketers make is solely relying on email because it yields the highest ROI. Oftentimes, email is thought of as the be-all, end-all form of communication in which marketers should invest their time and effort. While it is undoubtedly extremely effective, in order to maximize success, email should be used in conjunction with additional tools to have an impactful campaign.

Marketers should consider pairing emails with social media by including buttons in a message or a direct mail piece with a QR code that scans to a landing page. This gives consumers repeated messages and a consistent story line across multiple channels, which creates a memorable campaign. Make sure emails also follow a chain. Readers like to follow story lines and sending a one-off email eliminates that.

Back to school season can be one of the most exciting times of the year; take advantage of this excitement to brush up on the basics and reboot best practices. By going back and studying the basics, marketers can be sure their campaign is an ace.
About the Author

EJ McGowan, general manager of Campaigner, has more than 25 years of experience in the software industry with expertise in building highly available, scalable SaaS-based solutions.

How to Use Creative Typography to Craft Appealing Emails

Kevin George — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Email marketers are seen leaving no stone unturned in order to get their emails delivered and read by subscribers. Apart from adding the right content and promoting the right offers, they also put extra efforts into giving the emails an awesome look and feel.

Automate Order Notifications with MailChimp

Jenn Borchert — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Mailchimp has introduced a new automation solution for ecommerce businesses to design and send personalized transactional emails including shipping confirmations and order invoices.

Sync Email Data to Digital Service Providers with Ease

peter@websitemagazine.com (Pete Prestipino) — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 06:00:00 GMT

There is an increasingly clear and present need for companies and marketers alike to have their most current user email data validated and synced to their email service provider in real-time.

While the benefits of doing so would be significant (higher deliverability rates are just one example) how can senders go about doing that and where should they begin?

Synapp.io recently announced that it is partnering its email list cleaner service, DataValidation, with PieSync, a popular two-way real-time synchronization platform. Through the partnership, DataValidation gives its users the benefit of streamlining their data across multiple online apps, and offers access to native integration that takes advantage of the opportunities both platforms have to offer.

The Beginner's Guide to Email Marketing

Karl Kangur — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 06:00:00 GMT

If you have an e-mail address-and 89 percent of Americans check their email once a day-odds are you have been the target of email marketing.

Those recommendation emails from Amazon? Or that reminder from one of your favorite brands that Christmas is coming? These are the end result of carefully thought out and executed email marketing campaigns. A customer email address is one of the most important assets a successful marketer can obtain. According to the Direct Marketing Association, for every dollar a company spends on email marketing, they get a 40 dollar return on investment (ROI). That's an ROI of 4,000 percent! No other marketing channel comes close to delivering that rate of return.

Are Messaging Apps the New Email?

Steve True — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Messaging apps and other innovative technologies like AR and VR are the Wild West for marketers, a tempting uncharted territory with infinite possibilities. Retailers are seeking out innovation, too -- as artificial intelligence evolves and customer service bots become more popular, we're starting to see things like shipping confirmations being sent over Facebook Messenger.

Christmas Email Prep in July: Steps Retailers Should Take Now

EJ McGowan — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Christmas may be months away, but in the world of retail, that means it is right around the corner.

The holiday shopping season, which notoriously begins with Black Friday every November, is a major focus for most retailers and gives them the opportunity to net a profit for the year if they aren't on track to already. For these businesses, the holiday retail season ideally begins months earlier with planning and preparation well ahead of execution.

However, research suggests that up to 38 percent of internet retailers are unprepared for the holiday shopping season as late into the year as August.

Below are best practices that retail marketers should begin implementing now to get a jump start on holiday success.

Part I: Prepare Assets
Given the summer season is a slower one for many retailers, marketers should take advantage of this period and use the extra time to create Q3 and Q4 marketing calendars, build and scrub email subscriber lists, fortify their social media presence, and engage in customer reactivation campaigns.

For these reactivation campaigns, marketers' goals should be to remind disengaged customers what they purchased from their brand in the past and encourage further conversion by offering promotions on similar or complementary items. This strategy will help ensure these familiar brands are already top of mind for customers once holiday shopping begins. When it comes to email specifically, marketers should clean up contact lists by removing any recipients who don't respond to these reactivation campaigns so that the lists are immaculate ahead of the holidays.

Once these unresponsive contacts have been removed, marketers should replenish lists by adding new, high-quality contacts. One helpful way to go about this is through social media integration. All marketing emails should include social media links at the bottom, so that recipients can easily visit brands' Facebook, Instagram and other social media pages. By interacting with companies on social media, customers can spread the word about their favorite brands among their entire social networks, creating a ripple effect and helping retailers identify new targets.

In addition to social buttons, retailers should include direct buy buttons into emails so that contacts can easily make purchases from their email screen. To optimize this feature for mobile devices, marketers should implement mobile-responsive design templates over the summer if they have not already done so.

Part II: Stoke the Customer Base
Once preparations are complete, marketers should focus on creating a series of campaigns leading up to the actual holiday promotions themselves. The goal of these campaigns is two-fold: to build pre-holiday excitement for the brand, and to collect insights into what offers will resonate most with target audiences for Black Friday and beyond.

In these campaigns, marketers should remind audiences that the holidays are around the corner, ask them for their preferences via email survey, and even see if they would like to be part of a focus group to determine which promotions retailers should use come November. To be most strategic, marketers should first offer these opportunities as perks to their more highly engaged contacts, and ladder them down to other engagement levels as needed.

Not only will these pre-engagement campaigns plant brands' seeds among their contacts before the holidays hit, but they will also provide marketers with useful data to leverage once they need to roll holiday promotions.

Part III: Execute with Ease
For marketers who spend the summer and fall preparing, execution of actual holiday campaigns should come with ease.

A good rule of thumb for retailers looking to capitalize on the holiday retail season is to implement three to five pre-engagement campaigns so that by the time Black Friday nears, it's possible to launch informed and efficient holiday campaigns.

By implementing the best practices above and dedicating effort to the holiday season well ahead of time, retailers should experience a very merry retail season in Q4.

EJ McGowan, general manager of Campaigner, has more than 25 years of experience in the software industry with expertise in building highly available, scalable SaaS-based solutions.

Boost Email Engagement with the 5 "Ts"

Jen Tabbal — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Industry experts know that content marketing has many benefits for brands. Not only can a good content marketing program help increase brand awareness and improve your reputation, but it can also drive customer engagement and increase revenue.