“I don’t believe in email. I’m an old-fashioned girl. I prefer calling and hanging up.”
Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker)đ
We have come a long way since Carrie Bradshaw and the old-fashioned ways! But have we crossed over and reached the other side? Have we outgrown email? No way! You better believe it, we all thought that email was dead, taken over by social media in this new, instant gratification, social-feed-obsessed society. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: email is thriving more than ever before.
According to recent studies by CMO.com, which included 1,000 workers who owned a smartphone (and as you may have found out in our post on “What’s the Best/Most Effective Time to Send an Email“), 90% of the survey participants check their emails during work hours (the morning slot being the most popular). One of the reasons being that communication between colleagues at work, takes place via email as opposed to a face-to-face conversation, and 85% (so, pretty much all of the participants who check their emails at work) check their emails before arriving to work too, and a not-so-modest 9% check their emails constantly, those “emailaholics” out there, you know who you are. On top of that, Marketing Insider Group found that office workers check their emails up to 30 times per hour! And Marketo found that checking emails was the number one activity to take place online, 95% of people actually going online for this reason. đ±
CMO.com’s study was also not the first to reveal that email marketing is the preferred way to receive marketing material. Therefore, you’ll need to invest time and money into your email marketing campaigns, it really is worth it. In fact, DMA 2018 states, that every $1 invested in email marketing should see an average return of $32.
The preferred way to receive marketing material
Source: CMO.com
An interesting pointer that arose from CMO’s study was the importance of personalizationđ. Misspelling a subscriber’s name, sending offers that are not tailored to suit the receiver/ out-of-date, or even sending a discounted offer for an item the subscriber purchased the day before, were up there with the most frustrating things about receiving marketing material (of any form). With the data insights we have available to us now, there’s really no room for these type of errors. On the other hand, too much personalization was said to border on creepy (you’ll need to find a good balance). Other factors that participants found annoying were: receiving emails too often from a brand and receiving emails that were too wordy/poorly written. In fact, according to a study carried out by EmailUplers, 78% of subscribers will unsubscribe if they receive emails too regularly; GetResponse stating that any more than 5 will decrease your open rates.
Finally, a whopping 85% of CMO’s participants check their emails on their smartphone and 65% also check their emails on their Desktop/laptop. Therefore, your marketing emails need to be responsive to both. According to EmailUplers, 80% of mobile users will delete emails if they are not optimized for mobile, and Econsultancy found that 45% of opens take place on a mobile device or tablet, and 58% will click through. We have some awesome tips here on optimizing emails for mobile use, so there’s really no excuse.
There’re a lot of results and statistics here to take in, so we are going to make it easy for you. All you need to remember is that email is NOT dead, it really is alive and truly kicking a few virtual butts out there.
