Key Email Marketing Statistic for 2021 and Beyond

Since 1978 when Gary Thuerk sent the first commercial emails in bulk, email marketing has significantly evolved. The turn of the millennium saw email marketing become a primary tool for businesses to better reach their customers. Even after all these years—and with as much as most of us hate spam emails—marketers still trust email marketing to be one of the most cost-effective and conversion-rich forms of digital marketing. But is it?

Going by the current email marketing statistics, the trend of reaching out to potential and existing customers through their inbox is here to stay. However, as we will see, email is not the only way, or necessarily the best way, of accomplishing this. 

Email Marketing Statistics for 2021

The success of email marketing can be largely attributed to the ever-growing number of email users across the globe. To more clearly understand the reach of email marketing among your customers and target audience, let’s look at the actual numbers regarding email usage, the return on investment (ROI) on email marketing, and the preference among marketers to use emails as a primary marketing channel.     

Email Usage

Email is an integral part of our online communication and digital connectivity. In the U.S., over 90% of internet users have email accounts used for business or private communications. This widespread usage is clearly shown in the following statistics:

• In 2019, the total number of email users worldwide was 3.9 billion, and this is expected to increase to 4.48 billion by 2024. 
• Around 281 billion emails were sent and received every single day in 2018. This figure is estimated to go up to 347 billion by 2023.
• With the growing popularity of smartphones and tablets, portable devices account for over 40% of all email opens. 

Return on Investment (ROI)

The reason why marketers prefer email marketing over other marketing channels is its cost-effectiveness. Statistics show that email is a more effective way to acquire customers than social media. Therefore, it is no surprise that the ROI of email marketing is significantly higher than social media marketing. 

• On average, email generates $38 for every $1 spent, yielding an unmatched ROI of 3,800%. 
• One in five companies reports an ROI of over 70:1 for email marketing.
• This high ROI led an estimated $350 million to be spent on email advertising in the U.S. in 2019. 
• 59% of B2C marketers reported the email as their biggest source of ROI. 

Preference by Marketers

A marketing campaign is deemed effective when it reaches the right audience and promotes a suitable level of interaction with the call-to-action (CTA). Key performance indicators (KPIs) of email marketing provide visibility for marketers to analyze the effectiveness of the campaigns, which is reflected in their preference to use emails for marketing.

• 35% of marketers send 3-5 emails per week to their customers. 
• 31% of B2B marketers consider email newsletters the best way to nurture leads. 
• 78% of marketers have reported an increase in audience engagement through email marketing in the last 12 months.  

Even with such robust numbers, businesses often find it a challenge to reliably reach their customers as much as they would like to through email marketing. Marketing emails arriving too frequently, and the consistent flow of other spam emails, can make subscribers just ignore the majority of email messages. Because we are all inundated with emails, we have been conditioned to turn a blind eye to most of them. 

On average, an email marketing campaign report reveals that only 5-15% of emails get opened and the rest head straight to the spam folder or the trash. Out of the limited number of opened emails, only 7.8% get clicked, which shows poor audience engagement. However, we have seen that the ROI for email marketing is still quite high compared to other forms of marketing. 

So, imagine what kind of ROI you could be seeing if you added an additional marketing method with a higher typical read rate and click-through rate (CTR) than email can offer.

While email marketing is an essential constituent of advertising and branding strategy, the communication gap left by email marketing can be successfully bridged through text marketing or SMS marketing, which is a cost-effective, reliable, and more direct marketing channel to complement your overall marketing efforts.      

How Text Marketing Can Complement Your Overall Marketing Strategy

When it comes to quickly and reliably conveying information and gathering real-time responses from your target audience, text marketing or SMS marketing is simply more effective than email marketing. Key SMS marketing statistics reveal that 95% of text messages are read and responded to within the first 3 minutes of being delivered with a click-through rate of 9.18% for text messages with special offers. Texts have an engagement rate six times higher than emails, making text marketing the ideal fit for bolstering your marketing strategy.

Now that you know that text marketing has the potential to boost your marketing ROI and marketing success, let’s look at what the right SMS marketing tool should offer you. 

Innovative SMS marketing platforms can provide increased character counts (240 vs. the standard 160) to give you enough space to design intriguing SMS and MMS marketing texts for your recipients. Robust features such as autoresponders, survey creation tools, an intuitive incoming message board, and unlimited user groups and keywords can give you everything you need for successful text marketing campaigns. 

Additionally, you will want to make sure you are partnering with a company that can offer you real-time, US-based customer support with real humans—not more chatbots. 

Email marketing is here to stay, but partnering with an innovative SMS marketing platform can be sure to see your marketing ROI reach new heights as you interact with customers in a way that most customers prefer—text. 

Jeff Winaker

Jeff Winaker is the CEO of NorthText. He’s passionate about helping clients reach their customers faster with SMS marketing. He resides in the Bay Area with his family.