We often get asked if email marketing is still relevant in today’s hyper-connected online world. The fact of the matter is, email marketing still delivers substantial performance for companies across both B2B and B2C industries. In general, email marketing generates $38 for every $1 spent, a whopping 3,800 percent ROI. (Source) Below are more specific B2C and B2B Email Marketing Stats.

5 B2C Email Marketing Statistics (Source)

1. Only 7% of small-to-medium business (SMBs) use email as a brand-building tool.
2. Welcome emails are incredibly effective: on average, 320% more revenue is attributed to them on a per email basis than other promotional emails.
3. Consumers who purchase products through email spend 138% more than those that don’t receive email offers.
4. Email subscribers are 3x more likely to share content on social media than leads who came through another channel, according to QuickSprout.
5. 80% of retail professionals indicate that email marketing is their greatest driver of customer retention. Runner-up was social media.

 

5 B2B Email Marketing Statistics (Source)

1. Email is the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences, behind only colleague recommendations and industry-specific thought leaders.
2. 86% of business professionals prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes.
3. CTRs are 47% higher for B2B email campaigns than B2C email campaigns.
4. 59% of B2B marketers say email is their most effective channel in terms of revenue generation.
5. 56 percent of brands using emoji in their email subject lines had a higher open rate, according to a report by Experian.

And, here’s a chart showing the average email open rate for different industries:

 

So how might email marketing be relevant for your business? If you’ve spent weeks collecting business cards and adding the contacts to your CRM, the next logical step is for you to set up a plan that involves regular touches. Remember, these are potential customers, so don’t let them forget about you long after the initial meeting.

There are a variety of techniques available to get the greatest utilization from email marketing. However, a good place to start is with a newsletter that keeps your prospects and clients updated on the most relevant and exciting news occurring with your business and industry.

Using an Email Marketing Platform

Gone are the days when you need to send individual emails all with the same message. These days there are plenty of options to use, however, a few of our favorites are MailChimp, Campaign Monitor and Constant Contact. If your company is using a CRM like Hubspot or Zoho, you can design your email newsletter within these platforms and send it to an existing contact list. An added bonus of using an email marketing application is that you can schedule your emails ahead of time so that they send at just the right moment when your prospect is most likely to open them. Perhaps you want to use the same design for each of your newsletters? You can simply duplicate a previous newsletter and just change up the content, instead of rebuilding it from scratch each time.

Choosing What to Say

Now, the good stuff: what to put in your email newsletter? This is your chance to get creative. Yes, you can add your most recent blogs and project updates, but it’s also a chance for you to share any press mentions, new hires, community involvement, upcoming events, fun facts, team photos, or even “words of advice.” Fill your newsletter with info that you as a recipient would be excited to read each month. Providing valuable info will increase the likelihood of people actually opening it and reading it. And don’t’ forget to include linked icons to each of your social media profiles. Your emails are a great way to build up your social media audience.

Analyzing Newsletter Results for Optimization

One of the most compelling reasons for using an email marketing platform, like MailChimp, is the ease of use and data collection. The MailChimp dashboard provides stats on how many people opened your email newsletter, which newsletter content pieces received the highest clicks, and more. This data is particularly useful when for improving your email marketing strategy and building newsletters, and the results can help you determine how to optimize your design and what content to include.

When curating your content, make sure to include information that people want to read and interesting news about your company. Using an online email marketing platform, like MailChimp or Campaign Monitor, can streamline the process of building, sending and analyzing newsletters.

As a busy CEO, CMO or other C-level executive, we know that your time is valuable and building and managing a newsletter isn’t your top priority. It makes sense to hire an experienced team to manage newsletter tasks, so you can keep leading. As an agency, we at Divining Point employ an email marketing strategy of our own and help clients write, design and deploy newsletters of their own. If you have questions about getting started or just need an extra hand, let us know. We’d be happy to help.