Statistics Show Why Email Has To Be Part Of Your Marketing Mix

by Tom Ruwitch

Do you check your email before breakfast each morning? I do. How about in the last few minutes before you go to bed? Yeah, me too. Do you check your email in bed? I’m embarrassed to admit it. What about in the bathroom? I’ll take the Fifth on that one.

If you stand accused of any of the above, take heart. You’re not alone. More important, if you market a business, heed the news that email captures people’s attention – at all hours.

Here are some recent statistics about email usage:

• Ninety-two percent of online adults use email (McKinsey & Co.).

• Fifty-eight percent of adults check their email first thing in the morning (Customer Intelligence).

• Seventy percent of millennials check email in bed (Adobe).

• Sixty-one percent of consumers say they like to receive promotional emails weekly (MarketingSherpa).

• Employees spend an average of 13 working hours each week in their email inbox (McKinsey & Co.).

Here are two more -- oldies but goodies from a 2014 survey of 1,000 internet users by My.com:

• Ninety percent “compulsively” check email.

• Eight percent said their compulsion includes checking email immediately after sex.

People are hungry to check their email, so email has to be part of your marketing mix.

Before you start purchasing lists and flooding inboxes with spam, consider some other key statistics:

• Relevant emails sent to a segmented mailing list drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails sent indiscriminately to an unsegmented list (Jupiter Research).

• Automated, segmented messages generate open rates 70.5% higher and click rates 152% higher than mass emails sent to unsegmented lists (Epsilon Email Institute).

Email marketing works best when you build a list of people who want to hear from you (opted in) rather than buying or scraping together a list of people who don’t know you. If you have data about your subscribers -- demographics, interests, purchasing history or similar intelligence -- use it to segment your list.

Tailor specific messages to people with specific interests. Expand your subscriber profiles by tracking responses to your emails. If John Doe clicks on your link about turbocharged hybrid vehicles, add John to your list of people interested in that topic. Then deliver a follow-up email to John soon after he clicks that link or include him in the announcement you send next month about your sale on such vehicles.

The more relevant your messaging, the more likely subscribers are to open your emails, read them and act on them. If you blast the same mass emails to everyone on your list, your message may land in the inbox, but even the most compulsive email-checker won’t bother to read your stuff.

Most email marketing applications allow you to create segmented lists and track opens and clicks. Look for applications that automate the delivery of follow-up emails and allow you to personalize the messages based on subscribers’ interests. n

Tom Ruwitch is president and founder of MarketVolt, an interactive marketing firm. Go to MarketVolt.com/Resources to get “10 Secrets to Write Subject Lines That Sell” and other free resources.