Email Marketing Facts and Best Practices 2014

Email marketing, proves time and time again to be one of the most effective avenues in digital marketing. We gathered information from industry experts in email marketing to bring you the following 2014 Email Marketing Facts, Figures, Statistics, and Best Practices.

A special thanks to FlightMedia, who brought together the “Ultimate Guide to Mastering Email Marketing in 2014,” we would like to share the best practices in email marketing for this year. We took the facts and statistics from this post and developed them into a simple B2B Friendly blog that will hopefully change the way you look at email marketing. The most recent averages from all 2013 Email Benchmark Reports (with an analysis of over 2.5 Billion emails) reports the following general averages for emails sent across all industries.

Open rate: 21.47%
Click-through rate: 3.16%
Unsubscribing rate: 0.47%
Click-to-open rate: 14.72%
Unsubscribe-to-open rate: 2.29%

Although these averages aren’t too impressive, B2B sales emails show a 27.97% open rate with a 4.55% click-through rate, which is slightly above the average.

To find out where these emails are being read, we turn to Econsultancy who reports the following data:

23% of Emails read on Mobile
33% of Emails read on Desktop
44% of Emails read on Webmail

Even with new social media connections available through sources like Facebook and Twitter, email can still be a valuable sales tool. In the most recent study conducted by “Mobile Mindset,” results showed that over 60% of people in the US check their phones at least once an hour. So, how is email marketing comparable to social media for businesses? The following data is from Hostpapa:

Email marketing spend increased by 60% in 2012 with an average ROI of 4000%, leaving the digital marketing budget share at 17.4% in comparison to social medias 13.7%

94% of businesses use email while only 61% of them use social media.

So, what does all of this data tell us? The answer is NOTHING, unless we use this data as insight into how we are going to master our email marketing efforts. Come with me on this 7 Step journey to mastering your email marketing in 2014. Since I am assuming most people who are reading this article already have experience in email marketing and most likely deal with several lists, let’s focus on engaging our subscribers and re-engaging the in active ones.

1. Streamline Your Subject Lines

Before you dive into detailed email marketing strategies, you first have to get people to open your emails. So, what is the first thing that your customers see in your email engagements? Subject lines. With the focus of re-engaging clients who haven’t followed through with received quotes, downloaded marketing materials, or have abandoned their carts, we want to look at what role subject lines play in the matter. Specific to your niche (according to Exact Target’s 2013 annual report,) subject lines with words like “profit,” “revenue,” and “money” had the highest performance. On the contrary, subject lines that used words like “asset,” “ROI,” and “industry,” had the worst performance rates. Below is a list of exact words used in B2C emails and their click to open rates.

News – 16.2%
Update – 4.9%
Breaking – 33.5%
Alert – 25.9%
Bulletin – 12.5%
Issue – 8.5%
Top Stories – 5.9%
Latest – 9%
Sale – 54.3%
Free and Half Price – Negative 67.6%

As you can see, and are probably surprised by, people are looking for the latest and greatest when they open their emails. It is our job as marketers to figure out what it is that our audience clicks on and why they click on it. In regards to subject lines, the shorter the subject line, the more effective it typically is. To give you an exact metric, subject lines with less than 2 words in addition to subject lines that are more than 14 words had much higher performance rates than subject lines that contained between 2-14 words. What does that tell us? People are more inclined to click an email with a short subject line because it is direct and straight to the point, but they are also willing to click emails with longer than normal subject lines, because to them, it must be important. Here are some more interesting facts about subject lines:

Subject lines with 10 characters or less had over a 55% open rate.
There is an average 52% open rate on emails with subject lines in regards to discounts and money-off promotions.
Emails sent specific to the brand/company sending them, had an average 39% open rate.

2. Avoid Spam Filters

Spam filters work on a point system in which the filters watch for certain keyword phrases and other elements that will accrue points every time they are found in your email campaigns. The higher the points, the more likely it is that the email will hit the spam box. This is where you have to be careful. While it is important to know which subject lines perform the best, it will not matter if the email doesn’t even hit their inbox. So, when you are creating your subject lines, take heed to what alerts spam filters. If you don’t, once your campaign reaches a certain number of points (spam score,) all emails go straight to junk folders. There isn’t a set number as all thresholds are dependent on different servers. Here are a few examples the type of content that grabs the attention of spam filters, and the average amount of points that you will accrue if you include this content:

Talks about money (.193 points)
Talks about breakthrough (.232 points)
Mortgage sales pitches (.297 points)
Talks about an ‘urgent’ matter (.288 points)
Says the words ‘Money Back Guarantee’ (2.051 points)

Spam scores are rated on a scale of 1-10, and typically you want to keep your spam score between 3.5-5, but preferably on the lower side. It is best to keep it as low as you possible can. Some email marketing platforms will measure your score as you are creating your campaign, so you can keep a tight grasp on where you stand with spam. Here are a few other malpractices that you should avoid, to make sure your spam score stays low.

Amateur coders creating messy HTML
Creating an HTML email that is only an image as filters will think you are tricking them since they can’t read images
Saying “test” in the subject line (agencies run into this when sending drafts to clients for approval)
Sending multiple emails to the same client or company. Firewalls will catch this right away and assume it is a spam attack.
Using Microsoft Word and exporting the code to HTML (That code is also sloppy, and spam filters hate it.)

3. Drafting Calls-to-Action

In regards to CTA’s (calls to action,) there really is no argument as statistics clearly show that “Click Here” has the highest click rate while “Go” and “Submit” come in 2nd and 3rd. The best tips and practices for CTA’s are:

Location – This is industry specific, however, a recent study done by Neil Patel on his clients showed that there is average of a 17% increase in conversions for CTA’s that are placed on the bottom of site copy rather than the top of middle.
Design – Google recently did a study on one of their call to actions by testing 50 different shades of blue until they found the blue that had the highest conversion rate. Again, design will be an aspect of your specific industry, but great design aspects such as color , button copy, hovering effects, etc., have an average of increasing conversions from 20-30%
Timing – It is proven that 6am has a 9% higher conversion rate than any other time during the Page 5 day. However, let’s look at a broader spectrum of results based on day of the week and time of day.

4. Make Everything Mobile Friendly

Earlier, we stated that 23% of your emails are being read on mobile; nations like the US have higher percentages and the global average for those who read emails on mobile is currently at 47% and said to reach over 55-57% by the end of the year (according to Litmus and Econsultancy.) Their report on mobile email marketing also states that certain B2C brands see up to 70%+ of their emails being read on mobile devices. With these statistics, it’s hard to think anything but responsive. Check out this following infographic: Responsive design can however be a little difficult when trying to reach your clients inboxes. Between passing filters and certain devices not supporting responsive emails, you have to make sure that you know what you are doing when designing, or you hire an experienced designer/coder who can make sure your responsive emails look great and get to the inboxes. Currently, not all responsive emails are not supported by:

iPhone Gmail Applications
iPhone Mailbox Applications
iPhone Yahoo Applications
Android Gmail Applications
Android Yahoo Applications
BlackBerry OS 5
Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone 8

Don’t let this scare you however, because it is the main platforms you need to worry about, all of which support responsive emails:

iOs Mail Applications
Android 4.X Email App
Windows Phone 7.5
BlackBerry OS7 and Z10

Another tactic, beyond the responsive design of your email, that you can do to make it very mobile friendly, is to add ‘click-to-call’ buttons. When offering products and services, using click to call is an effective tool for streamlined communication with little navigation. Gladstone Brooks has a great example of how to utilize click to call: All rules apply to click to call’s in regards to design, responsiveness, etc., however, if this is done right it can be quite effective. Google reported earlier this year that they generated over 2 Billion dollars from mobile marketing; this wouldn’t have been accomplished without making their emails mobile friendly. They also reported that click-to-calls generate over 10 million calls a week for their advertisers.

5. Personalize, Segment and Target!

To enhance the effect of one-to-one communication in your email marketing, it is vital that you are using personalization. Salesforce states that personalized emails (with recipients first name,) can increase sales conversion rates by 15-25% and click through rates by 25-35%. They also conducted a survey in which 68% of marketers stated that they are going to use more personal messaging tactics in their email marketing. EpiServer did a global marketing survey in which 14% of email marketers stated that their campaigns get better responses when:

The segment their email data bases
Personalize their messages

They also recommend that you segment your email lists by marketing persona. This allows targeted content to enhance the personalized messages. Personalizing and segmenting is all fun in games, but what is happening to the individuals who are clicking through your CTA’s? Where are they landing? If your answer to that question isn’t “a landing page,” then maybe it is time to make a greater effort towards converting. The most important aspect of a landing page, in regards to email campaigns, is relevance. Many marketers make the mistake of providing call-to-actions and links to irrelevant landing pages. Hubspot states that having relevant and focused information in your landing pages can increase your conversion by 55%+. Hubspot also recommends giving free content in order to provide value in exchange for information, such as:

eBooks
White Papers
Case Studies
eCourses
Podcasts
Videos, etc.

In regards to “re-engaging,” if you have a customer that has abandoned their cart or not converted quite yet, sending them an email (following all above guidelines,) that offers them a relevant and free information source, is said to increase your chances of conversion by 20-35%.

Email Marketing in 2014: Keys to Success

Modern Marketing Partners, a Naperville based B2B Marketing Agency, believes that email is an important part of your overall marketing plan. Contact us for more information and for a free Modern Marketing Report Card.