We’ve been conducting some research at the office and putting together some case studies on the effectiveness of email marketing and effective digital communication in South Africa.
Some of the numbers that have come out of this are spectacular! Take a look at why you should be utilising email marketing to its full potential.
It’s the best ROI for any digital medium in SA
Email marketing has the best return on investment (ROI) of any digital marketing channel measured in our research. On average, clients have reported an average ROI of 30:1 when using targeted email marketing.
Meaning for every R1 spent on email marketing; you can expect around R30 worth of return. Our friends in the UK have said that for every pound spent on email marketing, there is an ROI of 38 pounds generated and over the pond in the US, it’s around $44.
It’s low cost
Email marketing is extremely cost-effective, in contrast to a host of other digital communication platforms. On average, it costs 80% to 86% less to send an email than to promote content on social media or search engines.
It’s easy to measure
It’s effortless to measure the success of an email campaign. You can get immediate feedback on the delivery success rate, open rate, bounce rate, click rate, conversion rate and more. This easy to measure aspect also makes it ideal for A/B testing a marketing campaign.
You should use segmentation
Segmentation is dividing your subscriber list into segments for more direct, targeted marketing. For example, you can create lists based on location, gender, age, known interests and a ton more.
Click-throughs are around 100.95% higher in segmented email campaigns than non-segmented campaigns, and segmented email campaigns have an open rate that is 14.3% higher than non-segmented campaigns.
B2C Email Marketing Statistics
When it comes to communicating directly with clients, here are some of the stats we discovered:
- Welcome emails are incredibly effective. On average, 320% more revenue is attributed to them per email than other most other promotional emails.
- Consumers who purchase products through email spent 138% more than those that don’t receive any offers over email.
- Email subscribers are 3x more likely to share content on social media than prospects introduced via other digital channels.
- Almost 80% of retail professionals indicate that email marketing is their greatest tool to ensure customer retention. The nearest channel to this is social media with just 44% effectivity of retention.
- Around 77% of people prefer to get opted-in promotional messages via email over direct mail, text, phone, or social media.
B2B Email Marketing Statistics
In the business to business space, some interesting stats stood out:
- Email is the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences, behind only word-of-mouth recommendations and industry-specific thought leadership communication.
- Around 86% of business professionals prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes over a host of other channels, surprisingly including phone calls.
- CTRs are 47% higher in B2B email campaigns than in B2C email campaigns.
- 59% of B2B marketers say email is their most effective channel in terms of revenue generation in the b2b space.
Still not convinced?
Consider these stats about email marketing and which tactics work the best:
- 80% of users will delete emails that aren’t optimised for mobile.
- Emails with a personalised subject line are around 25% more likely to be opened.
- Segmented campaigns generate more than half of all revenue from email marketing.
- Having video is your email can improve CTRs by as much as 300%.
- Except for a drop-in email open rate between 2013 to 2014, the average open rate for email continues to improve year on year, reaching 24.88% in 2018 (an increase of 0.3% compared to 2017).
- 73% of millennials identified email as their preferred means of business communication.
- The number of email users worldwide will have risen to 2.9 billion by mid-2019.
- Nearly 188 million emails are sent each minute across the globe; this number is expected to reach over 192 million before 2020.
There you have it, folks. Email works… but only if done right! If you want to find out more, click here to see how myself and TouchBasePro help companies improve their returns through effective email marketing. I’d love to hear your thoughts!