Top marketers have long known that one well-crafted email message could generate better results than 100 low quality emails that largely got flagged as spam. Unfortunately, with thousands of new marketers trying to ‘get rich quick’ with digital marketing, consumers likely saw far more poorly handled messages than the good ones, which hurt everyone.
According to a recent report from SendGrid, however, that trend is finally changing! Their 2017 Email Benchmark Report found that the average email send rate has dropped from about 9.8 sends per month to 8.1 over the past year. This is quite a big reduction over just a year, and is definitely a good sign for the direction the industry is going.
What is even better is that the open rates grew over the same time period. They were at 27.3%, and shot up to 30.6%. This really goes to show how important it is to write out emails that people will really want to read, especially with a subject line that will grab their attention.
This is quite an in depth analysis done by SendGrid. They looked at more than 50 billion email messages that were sent out by 100,000 senders. The emails were spread out over 25 industries as well, which helps to give good insight into the strategy and effectiveness of what is happening.
The report also found that consumers are quickly moving away from desktop access to their email, in favor of mobile. This is no surprise, but still interesting. Last year’s report found that 8 of the 25 industries had desktop clients opening most of their email messages, whereas this year it was just 2 of the top 25. Just more proof that any marketer that wants to be successful needs to always have mobile on their mind.
What can help you? Emails need to be highly targeted, so segmenting your list is key to maximizing engagement with your messages. The benefits can be lucrative – the Direct Marketing Association reports a 760% increase in email revenue for marketing campaigns that are sent to segmented lists.
A call to action (CTA) is the all-important ‘next step’ in recipient engagement. Every email needs to have a clear CTA that allows subscribers to easily follow through with an action, whether that’s a hyperlink to your website or a bright button that takes you to a purchase page.
You can see the full report HERE.
