Marketing email statistics and facts

The marketing industry is undergoing an upheaval – be it gut-feeling and data-driven decision-making or change in ways of marketing. The progression clearly reflects people’s changing perspectives. 
The 2014 Science of Email Report provides a detailed survey of 150,000+ email campaigns, 1000+ English-speaking email users, 300+ opened marketing emails and more than 6.4 million individual one-to-one email exchanges. The results of the survey provide marketers, sales rep and professionals with insights and trends to draft impactful email campaigns.
Some of the insights in the report are given below.
More and more people are using email filters for ignoring unwanted mails.
More than 50% respondents said they have a different email address dedicated to diverting commercial mails, 25% use Gmail’s Priority Inbox feature and 54% make use of filters to sort mail. All in all, it has become quite popular to ignore unwanted mail using various filters. The common reactions to unwanted e-mails are a combination of: mark as spam (49%), unsubscribe (58%) and delete (68%).
Younger recipients use filtering methods more often than other demographics
63% of 18-29 years old respondents use filters to automatically sort mail while 49% of those over 60 years of age use them. While older demographics are adapting to new technologies, younger demographics are definitely using filters more often to ignore marketing mails.
Data suggests low preference of image-based mails, even though email recipients claim otherwise.
Two-thirds of those surveyed say that they do not prefer text-based emails as much as image-based mails. However, data reveals that when email response is measured on the basis of click-through rates, the number decreases with the size or number of images in the mail.
Younger email users prefer HTML formatted emails
While respondents over 45 years of age were divided equally on their preference for HTML as opposed to plain text, more than 75% of respondents in the age group of 18-44 preferred HTML-formatted emails. This reflects in the increase in usage of Gmail and iPhones, which load images automatically as opposed to email clients such as Outlook that do not display emails with images properly.
Younger demographics use smart phones more than tablets.
Approximately 30% of respondents over 60 use smart phones to check mails, half of those in the age group of 45-60 do the same, while more than 70% of 18-44 year old users prefer smart phones. They aren’t as partial to tablets though; 18-29 year-olds report lowest usage of tablets. Meanwhile, older users report a greater affinity towards the large screens for mobile reading.
One-to-one emails are opened less often than one-to-many emails on mobile.
When it comes to response to mass marketing vs. individual marketing, users’ behavior varies, even around mobile usage. 37% of one-to-one emails are checked on a mobile device; while as many as 47% of one-to-many emails are opened on non-desktop devices. This could be due to the difference in how recipients choose to read a more personal e-mail or also on the way marketing are timed (they may be sent in the morning before a user gets to a desktop device)
Time your emails contra-competitively to get higher click-through rates; send mails when others don’t.
The most commonly asked questions about email marketing is this: Which is the best day in the week to send marketing mails?
No one time works for every industry and business, however there are some common trends to help you make a decision: Send marketing mails when you have less competition. If you send mails at the same time as others, you will have to compete with more messages and thus have a higher chance of being ignored or delegated to spam. To get noticed, send mails at an unusual time.
Short and sweet emails yield good results
We touched on this with our recent article “10 Ways To Make Your Emails a Darn Site More interesting”. Email click through rate is conversely related to email body length and subject line. Make your point quickly and precisely, and you will get a better response.
Among mobiles, more than half of emails are opened on iPhones.
Marketers are slowly adapting to the increasing consumption of email on mobiles, and devices play a major role in formats that are most popular. Over half of mobile email clients are iPhone users, while the rest of the market share is covered by Android and iPad combined.