49 Email Marketing Statistics Marketers Need to Know
Why should your business care about email marketing statistics? There are over 205,000,000,000 emails sent every day. Why did I write out all those zeroes? Because I want you to understand how big of a number that really is. There are 205 billion emails being sent and delivered into waiting inboxes every 24 hours, and I’m guessing that your business contributes to that.
The question is: how well?
If you were inspired by our big list of email marketing campaigns that kill it, and want your campaigns to kill it too, don’t worry. Vendasta wants your 0.000001% of that 205 billion (approximately, please don’t actually send 2,050 emails a day) to get opened, read and clicked, so we’ve compiled a big list of email marketing stats that will help make that happen.
49 Email Marketing Statistics for 2016
General Email Stats
1. In 2016 there will be over 2.6 billion email users worldwide, and an expected 3.0 billion by 2020 (Radicati group, 2016) tweet
2. Email is 40x more effective at acquiring customers than Facebook or Twitter (McKinsey, 2014) tweet
3. 82% of B2B and B2C companies use email marketing technology (Ascend2) tweet
4. Email marketing has an ROI of $38 on every $1 spent (DMA, 2015) tweet
5. 73% of marketers say that email marketing is an integral part of their business (Pardot, 2015) tweet
6. Subscribers receive 416 commercial messages a month on average (EmailExpert, 2014) tweet
7. Nearly 90% of marketers say that email marketing brings them a positive ROI (ExactTarget, 2014) tweet
8. 90% of emails get delivered right into your audience’s inbox, while only 2% of Facebook fans see your posts in their newsfeed (Forrester Research) tweet
User Behavior Stats
9. 51% of people have an email address because they buy things online (Adestra, 2016) tweet
10. Only 5% of people say they don’t know why they have an email address, and they never use it (Adestra, 2016) tweet
11. Over 60% of workers in the US that use internet say that email is “very important” for their job (Pew Research, 2014) tweet
12. 53% of email users leave an email unread if they’re saving it to read for later, and 30% star it (Adestra, 2016) tweet
13. Most consumers check their email and text messages first thing in the morning, before anything else (Adestra, 2016) tweet
14. 67% of users will unsubscribe from an email list if they no longer want communications from the company (Adestra, 2016) tweet
15. 72% of consumers prefer email communication from a business over other channels (Adestra, 2016) tweet
16. People generally spend less than 15 seconds reading marketing emails, so keep it short and sweet! (MailChimp) tweet
17. Half of email users check their email when they’re bored, so make sure your email banishes the boredom! (Adestra, 2016) tweet
Email Optimization Stats
18. 53% of emails are opened on mobile (Litmus, 2015) tweet
19. 65% of email users worldwide access their email via a mobile device (Radicati Group, 2016) tweet
20. 75% of Gmail users access their accounts on mobile devices (TechCrunch, 2015) tweet
21. 86% of users say they use their smartphone for personal email, and 34% use it for their business email (Adestra, 2016) tweet
22. 70% of email users will re-read an email on their mobile device (business2community, 2016) tweet
23. 70% of consumers will delete an email immediately if it’s unreadable on their smartphone (business2community, 2016) tweet
24. One third of email click-throughs occur on a mobile device (Campaign Monitor, 2013) tweet
25. 50% of email users aged 19-34 generally use their mobile device to sort through emails before reading them on desktop (Adestra, 2016) tweet
Subject Line Stats
26. Subject lines with “10% off” get 21% higher click rate, and emails with “50% off” in the subject line get a 33% higher click rate (Adestra, 2015) tweet
27. Using the word “buy” in the subject line can improve click rate by 27%, but “register” and “early bird” decrease the click rate by 130% and 154% respectively (Adestra, 2015) tweet
28. In B2B emails, subject lines with the word “bulletin” decreased unsubscribe rates by 260% (Adestra, 2015) tweet
29. Emails with personalized subject lines are 7% more likely to be opened than emails with general subject lines (Experian, 2015) tweet
30. Subject lines with less than 30 characters, or more than 90, do the best. Everything between 30-90 characters is a dead zone! (Adestra, 2012) tweet
31. Subject lines with two words or less perform much stronger in open and click rates than lengthier subject lines (Adestra, 2012) tweet
32. Using the word “video” in your subject line can increase open rates 19%, CTR by 65%, and reduce unsubscribes by 26% (Syndacast, 2015) tweet
Email Content Stats
33. 87% of email users subscribe to a company’s email list to receive discounts (Adestra, 2016) tweet
34. 41% subscribe to get products and/or service updates (Adestra, 2016) tweet
35. Emails with coupons experience a 34% higher unique click rate, and a 27% higher transaction rate than emails without (eMarketer, 2014) tweet
36. 37.3% of millennials say they’re most likely to click on an email if it contains a promotion or deal (BrightWave, 2015) tweet
37. 53% of email users agree with receiving personalized messages offering them birthday discounts (Experian, 2015) tweet
38. 35% of email users prefer % off discounts over other deals (20% want free shipping) (Adestra, 2016) tweet
39. 79% of marketers rank email content and design as the most critical aspect of email (Salesforce, 2015) tweet
40. Mobile opt-ins (76%), birthday emails (75%) and transactional emails (74%) are the most effective emails (business2community, 2016) tweet
41. Transactional emails get 4 to 8 times more opens and clicks than non-transactional emails! (EmailMonks, 2015) tweet
42. Email users decide if they want to read your email in 3 to 4 seconds, so grab their attention! (litmus, 2012) tweet
Email Design Stats
43. 56% of brands do an annual major email redesign (Litmus, 2016) tweet
44. 51% of email marketers use alt text for in-email images (Litmus, 2016) tweet
45. 68% of email users will delete a mobile email that doesn’t look good, and 29% will unsubscribe (Adestra, 2016) tweet
46. 59% of marketers use responsive email design for all segmented, transactional and triggered emails (Litmus, 2016) tweet
47. 43% of Gmail users don’t turn on images in their email! Make sure to include alt text for them (Litmus, 2014) tweet
48. Ads in color are read 42% more often than their black and white counterparts (Colorcom, 2010) tweet
49. 27.7% of millennials say they’re most likely to interact with an email that has great photography, and 19.7% said the biggest factor was an eye-catching animation (BrightWave, 2015) tweet
With this list of email marketing statistics, it's clear to see that the email is far from dead. Use these email stats to guide your way to sky-high open rates, and see how Vendasta can help you conquer your campaigns. Have more email stats you want to share? Let me know in the comments below!