Does email marketing work in 2024? Stats and status!

Email marketing has been around since almost the dawn of the internet. As such, it has been extensively used by brands and businesses to promote, build trust, and ultimately sell. 

But, with the rise of social media and massive marketplaces, alongside the new privacy and data restrictions and protection legislations, does email marketing remain a valid option for your marketing needs? 

Today, we take a look at the current state of email marketing and what we can forecast for 2024! 

How is email marketing holding up? 

First things first, email marketing has been ‘put to rest’ many times before. And yet, each time it has bounced back, showing a resilience that makes it a fantastic marketing channel regardless of the current ‘trending’ channels or media. 

But how is email marketing faring today? To answer this, we can check out a few stats resulting from a survey made by Hubspot on the global use of email marketing. 

• There are 4 billion daily email users.

• 37% of brands are increasing their email budget.

• A majority of marketers using email leverage mobile-friendly emails as part of their marketing strategy.

• Segmented emails drive 30% more opens and 50% more clickthroughs than unsegmented ones.

• Most marketers send 2-3 emails per day. 12% send a weekly email.

• 77% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months.

• Smartphone users prefer to receive brand communications via email.

• Testing your emails leads to higher ROI.

So overall, email marketing remains a valid channel. It is, of course, no longer a ‘single’ or ‘exclusive use’ channel. This means it no longer has the massive power it used to, which allowed brands to create their entire marketing strategy around it without the need to focus on anything else. 

But even so, it remains a powerful channel that you should pay attention to especially if we take into consideration one of email marketing's strong suits: its conversion rate.

Do people really open marketing emails? 

Short answer? Yes, they do. Of course, as with any marketing channel, conversion is perceptually low — that’s part of any marketing strategy; it is almost impossible to get a conversion rate of over 30% for cold call channels — but even so, 

For example, that same Hubspot report claims that QA, A/B, and spam testing done for email marketing campaigns usually leads to higher ROI than other marketing channels: up to a 28% higher return when you put testing to work for your email program. (Litmus, 2022)

To better get a grasp on email marketing ROI, let’s look at some metrics

• Most marketers report an average email open rate of 46-50%. (HubSpot Blog Research, 2023)

• The average email clickthrough rate is 2.6-3%. (HubSpot Blog Research, 2023)

• The average email click rate is 7-9%. (HubSpot Blog Research, 2023)

• Emails with images offer an almost 10% boost in open rates.(GetResponse, 2022)

• The average email delivery rate is 85.7% (Emai Tool Tester, 2023)

• The average email delivery rate for Google is 95%, 91% for Microsoft, 81% for Yahoo, and 76% for AOL. (Email Tool Tester, 2023)

Benefits of email marketing

Email marketing has two great advantages: it is easily scalable and very flexible. In other words, email marketing allows - as a means of communication - the development of an endless number of very different marketing campaigns.

From loyalty campaigns to repurchase mailings or abandoned cart recovery, email marketing is perfect for reaching customers directly with various proposals and content for both sales and branding.

Compared to other marketing channels, we could say that email marketing has the following advantages:

Higher conversion rate: if used correctly, emailing has a much higher conversion rate than, for example, social media.

Profitability: the cost of an email marketing campaign is much lower than in other traditional channels -radio, television, etc-. It also does not require printing, layout, or stamping costs.

Fast and effective: thanks to the use of the Internet as a means of communication, you will be able to reach anyone regardless of where they are. In addition, it will be straightforward to segment and disseminate your campaigns if you use a database that is well-built and updated.

Overall, email marketing works and will work in 2024. So, be mindful of this and develop your marketing strategy to take full advantage of email marketing as a sales and branding channel!