Email senders are feeling confident in themselves as they approach the end of 2021, according to The State of Email Marketing, a study by Ascend2.
Of the marketers polled, most say
their firms are good at email, with 19% calling themselves best-in-class and 72% at least somewhat successful. Only 9% say they’re unsuccessful.
And 86% agree that
their email marketing program will a critical part of their overall marketing strategy in the year to come, 32% very much so.
But they face challenges, including:
- Increasing engagement — 55%
- Creating overall strategy — 31%
- Measuring performance/ROI —
29%
- Integrating email data with other data — 28%
- Improving deliverability — 24%
- Allocating sufficient budget — 22%
- Improving accessibility — 19%
- Allocating adequate resources —
19%
- Complying with regulatory requirements — 10%
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And, they admit they need to improve some things, like:
- Content quality — 61%
- Personalization — 56%
- Calls-to-Action — 34%
- Subject
lines — 31%
- Responsive design — 28%
- Social sharing options — 22%
- Social proof —
11%
Among the email trends that they plan to incorporate over the next year:
- Personalization — 58%
- Interactive content —
38%
- Responsive design — 32%
- Privacy/security features — 28%
- Accessible
design—25%
- User-generated content—21%
- Minimalist design—19%
- Segmentation—13%
- Animation—12%
- Ai-powered tools — 10%
Also, the respondents see that there’s more to marketing than email: 90% agree that data
from social media, SMS and other channels improves campaign performance, 40% strongly concurring with that.
How will they measure success? Here are the KPIs they deem most effective:
- Return on investment (ROI) — 36%
- Conversion rate — 36%
- Click-through rate (CTR) — 36%
- Open rate —
28%
- Click-to-open rate — 26%
- List growth rate — 23%
- Sharing/forwarding rate—19%
- Unsubscribe rate—13%
- Bounce rate—9%
Dynamic content is catching on: 12% are using it extensively, 46% sometimes and 26% are planning
to start.
What forms of dynamic content are being used?
- Images/visuals — 44%
- Text in email body — 39%
- Text
in subject lines — 34%
- Offers (discounts downloads, etc.) — 29%
- Product/content recommendations — 24%
- None of
these — 21%
- Achievements/milestones — 14%
- CTAs — 10%
- Countdown timers — 9%
Ascend2
and its Research Partners surveyed 528 marketers from October 17-22., 2021.
Of these, 23% were B2B, 55% B2C and 22% B2B and B2C equally. Most were from small firms, 66% from businesses with
fewer than 50 employees, 17% from those with 50 to 100 and 17% with more than 500.