18 Essential Email Marketing Statistics: 2020 Edition

In this post we round up some essential email marketing statistics from around the web, updated for 2020.

Email remains one of the best performing marketing channels and is here to stay and it’s a core strategy to increase website conversion rates. The DMA says that, for every $1 spent on email, it delivers average ROI of $32.

We’ve compiled a list of essential email marketing statistics from our own client data, and around the web. 

How Much Is an Email Address Worth?

The answer to this question will vary by industry, and how effective a company’s email marketing is.

Experian estimates that the average email address is worth £84.50.

This is a cross-industry average and will differ greatly, depending on the typical customer lifetime value. So, for example a travel email address may be worth £236, while retail is much lower at £79.

Whatever the exact figure for each industry, it does underline the value of email acquisition to build a database.

Whatever the exact figure for each industry, it does underline the value of email acquisition to build a database.

 

---

Best Days to Send Marketing Emails

According to Omnisend’s Marketing Automation Stats, the first ten days of the month offer the best overall performance in terms of open, click, and order rates. 

The 29th is the best single day in terms of average order rate from marketing emails. It’s also a good idea to follow the best days for ecommerce sales this way you can tie in your marketing campaigns for maximum results.

---

Email Marketing Statistics: ROI and Sales

There have been plenty of foolish posts predicting the death of email over the years, but it still delivers the best return on investment of any marketing channel.

The Econsultancy / Adestra 2019 Email Marketing Census confirms this, with 73% of company respondents ranking the channel as excellent, compared to 72% for SEO and 67% for paid search. 

Despite the positive stats on ROI, email attracted only 13% of company marketing spend on average in the last year, though is was attributed to 19% of sales. 

---

Email Marketing Stats: Open and Click Rates

The open rate isn’t a perfect metric (but then, what is?) but it does work well as a benchmark to track over time.

GetResponse is a great source for email marketing statistics, and its Email Marketing Benchmarks 2019 includes some useful data on open and click through rates.

• The overall average open rate for email marketing is 22.86%.
• The average CTR is 3.71%
• The average click to open rate is 16.23%.
• Unsubscribe rates, on average, are 0.21%.

Here are open, click and unsubscribe rates for selected industries.

---

Email Deliverability, Open and Click Rates

Dot Digital’s Email Benchmarking Report 2019 has some very useful data on delivery rates, as well as open and click rates.

Delivery rates have grown over the last three years, averaging 98.2% overall.

Overall open rates have increased over the last four years, from 17.2% in 2015 to 20.8% last year.

Financial services emails enjoyed the highest open rates last year, at 27.9%. The lowest open rates were for emails from publishers, at 17.7%.

Click through rates (CTR) averaged 2.41% in 2018. Utilities emails have the highest open rates, at 4.76%.

Retail Cart Abandonment Sales Uplift

Stats from our H1 2019 Retail Ecommerce Remarketing Report show cart abandonment email performance across different types of ecommerce sites.

Fashion enjoys the biggest sales uplift from cart abandonment emails, at 6.38. The average uplift across all retail types in 4.43%.

Email Marketing Subject Line Stats

Taken from a sample of 500 SaleCycle clients, these are the average open rates grouped by subject line content.

---

Email Client Market Share Stats

Litmus has data on the most popular webmail, desktop and mobile email clients, collected from 1.17 billion email opens.

---

Emails Deleted Without Reading

Return Path’s Hidden Metrics of Email Deliverability report presents some interesting data on the percentage of emails that end up in spam folders, are replied to, forwarded, or even complained about.

This chart shows the percentage of emails which are deleted without being read:

---

Cart Abandonment Email Stats

The average ecommerce open rate is often around 15%, but triggered emails like cart abandonment emails achieve much better results.

The overall average open rate for basket abandonment emails is 40.14%, with a click through rate of 28.64%.

The best performing sector is fashion ecommerce, with open rates of 43.15% and average CTR at 31.34%. Being aware of key information like fashion ecommerce statistics allows marketing teams to analyse the effectiveness of their campaigns.

Email Split Testing

Phrasee surveyed email marketers on the way they use A//B testing best practices to optimise email campaigns.

The following stats show that marketers have plenty of room for improvement here:

• Email marketers split test less than 50% of their campaigns.
• When they do splits, they mostly do A/B only, nothing more.
• After split testing, only 5% have statistical models to learn from the results.

---

Using Personalization in Email Marketing

The Adestra / IDM State of Digital Personalization report looked at marketers’ attitudes to email personalization. Benefits of personalization in email marketing

The email subscriber’s name is the most commonly used piece of customer data for email marketing, as you might expect.

It’s notable that data which provides real insight into customer behavior is less widely used.

Transaction data is collected by 49% of marketers, but only used regularly by 25%. Data Used by Marketers Use for Personalization:

55% of client-side marketers cited integrating data as the main barrier to using personalization in email marketing.

---

Personalized Emails and Consumers

Taken from a bluehornet survey, these email marketing statistics show that customers expect retailers to use implicit and explicit data to personalize marketing emails.

---

The Best Time to Send Cart Abandonment Emails

We know that cart abandonment emails work well, but the timing can make a massive difference to their effectiveness. Our stats, taken from 500 global brands, show that one hour from abandonment is the sweet spot.

Also, the effectiveness is greatly reduced if the email is sent more than 24 hours after the shopper has left the site.

---

How Marketing Emails Influence Consumers

59% of respondents said that marketing emails influence their purchase decisions, while just over 50% buy from marketing emails at least once a month.

---

Mobile Email Marketing Stats

According to stats from the Litmus State of Email report, mobile now accounts for 55% of opens. This suggests users are gaining confidence using mobile devices and therefore we could see an increase in mobile conversions in the future.

---

Consumer Attitudes to Email Marketing

A bluehornet survey(pdf) looked at the attitudes of 1,800 US consumers to marketing emails, with some useful insights. How often consumers check email accounts: 

Devices used to check emails: 

---

Email Optimization Strategies

The Adestra / Econsutancy Email Marketing Census found that a minority of companies have an email optimization strategy which they would describe as ‘quite’ or ‘very’ advanced.

Q: How would you describe the extent to which your company has a strategy for optimizing email marketing for mobile devices? (showing ‘quite’ or ‘very advanced’)

The report also looks at the specific tactics used to improve emails for mobile recipients. What have you done to optimise email marketing for mobile?

---

Attitudes to Emails Not Optimized for Mobile

Mobile optimized emails are a must, but as the previous charts show, some companies are less than advanced in their email optimization strategy.

As more and more emails are opened on mobile, failure to ensure that emails are readable on mobile devices represents a huge missed opportunity.

According to a consumer survey, 42.3% will simply delete non-optimized emails, while just 11.3% will read it anyway.

---

Email Marketing Statistics by List Size

Stats from GetResponse suggest that email performance is inversely proportional to list size.

---

Effectiveness of Different Tactics in Marketing Emails

GetResponse looked at how different tactics impacted email open rates. Emojis:

Personalized subject lines:

Preheaders:

Personalization in email body text:

---

Want to talk about cart abandonment emails?

Just enter your email below and let’s talk about how you can help build trust and increase conversions.

Comments

---