• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, November 1, 2021

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% 

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.