• by Jess Nelson , June 19, 2017

The first marketing email was sent almost forty years ago, and yet email still remains a high-functioning and rapidly growing marketing channel.

The use of email has seen growth in both B2B and B2C markets over the past two years, according to new research released by Salesforce. The cloud company polled 3,500 global marketing leaders, at either a manager level or higher position, in its fourth annual State of Marketing Report. 

Email was one of the top five marketing channels that displayed the highest level of growth over the past two years, according to the report, jumping 83% since 2015. 

Email experienced the largest surge in consumer-facing marketing programs, with email use by B2C marketers rising 106%. Email was the second-highest advertising channel in growth for B2C marketers, but trailed video advertising’s growth of 141%.

Video advertising was also the marketing channel that experienced the largest two-year growth in B2B marketing, with video use growing 204%. Video advertising was closely followed by SMS/text messaging, a channel that grew 197% in the B2B market. B2B email marketing, on the other hand, has only grown 56% since 2015.

As in previous report iterations, Salesforce analyzed the differences between self-identifying high-performing and low-performing marketers.  

High-performing marketers are 12.8 times more likely than underperformers to coordinate marketing efforts across channels such as email, mobile, and social. Marketers also report higher levels of awareness, engagement, and acquisition when combining email with additional marketing channels according to Salesforce.

Yet the majority of email messages contain identical information to the content displayed in alternative marketing channels. Fifty-one percent of respondents said their emails contain the same messages as other marketing channels, while 29% of email messages evolve across channels and customer actions.