20 email marketing statistics to help you prove how awesome email is

When I first started here at Campaign Monitor, I reached out to some of our most frequent blog readers and asked them what their biggest challenge with email marketing was.
My goal was to understand what people found most difficult about email marketing, and I expected to hear a lot of responses around improving open and click-through rates.
However, I was surprised to hear that one of the most common challenges was “proving the effectiveness of email marketing to my boss or clients”.
It seems that with social media marketing, mobile advertising, growth hacking and all these other newer marketing tactics, email isn’t getting the attention it deserves as a marketing channel.
So we’re bringing email back! Here’s a list of 20 email marketing statistics you can use to convince your boss or your clients that email marketing is a highly effective channel they should invest in.

Email reach statistics

Keep a few of these stats in your back pocket for the next time someone asks you if people still use and read email.

1. The total number of worldwide email accounts is expected to increase to over 4.3 billion accounts by year-end 2016. (Radicati Group)
2. It’s projected that in 2014, 191.4 billion emails will be sent and received each day with about 108 billion of those being from the business sector. (Radicati Group)
3. 78% of marketing emails are sent to a personal email account. (ChoozOn)
4. There are 3x more email accounts than Twitter and Facebook accounts combined. (Radicati Group)
5. 57% of email subscribers spend 10-60 minutes browsing marketing emails during the week. (ChoozOn)
6. Knowledge workers on average spend 13 of their working hours each week in their email inbox. (McKinsey & Company)
7. 92% of online adults use email, with 61% using it on an average day. Those who were most likely to use email on a daily basis were those with a college degree or an income of <$75,000. (Pew Research)
8. One survey found that 90% of business people use email as much, or more than they did last year. (Osterman Research)

Email Preference & Usage Statistics

So, email has an incredible reach – but how are people using it and what are their preferences?

9. When asked to opt-in to receive updates from a company, only 10% elected to do so through Facebook, while 90% chose to receive email newsletters. (Nielsen Norman Group)
10. Mobile matters: 41% of emails are opened on a mobile device. (Campaign Monitor)
11. Email triage is a growing trend. 23% of readers who open an email on a mobile device open it again later. (Campaign Monitor)

Email Effectiveness Statistics

So, email is a great way for people to communicate. But is it also effective for sales and marketing? Here are some statistics that say it is.

1. 70% of email readers open emails from a brand or company in search of a deal, discount, or coupon. (The Social Habit)
2. Email is 40x more successful at acquiring new clients than either Facebook and Twitter. (McKinsey & Company)
3. You are 6x more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than you are from a tweet. (Campaign Monitor)
4. 81% of online shoppers who receive emails based on previous shopping habits were at least somewhat likely to make a purchase as a result of targeted email. (eMarketer)
5. 42% of B2B organizations say email is one of their most effective lead generators for targeting new clients. (Circle Research)
6. Companies sending over 100,000 emails each month see a 94% return on investment. (MECLabs)
7. Newsletters are still considered to a great way to grow or maintain relationships, even during times when people aren’t actively making purchasing decisions. (Nielsen Norman Group)
8. When it comes to purchases made as a result of receiving a marketing message, email has the highest conversion rate (66%), when compared to social, direct mail and more. (The DMA)
9. One study showed that email is the second most used marketing tool (after a company website) for B2B companies. (eMarketer)

In Conclusion

Although email marketing might not get as much time in the limelight anymore, it has a far wider reach than all the social networks combined and generates a significantly higher click-through rate and total ROI.
So use these statistics in your next presentation, pitch or conversation and lets make sure our old friend email marketing gets the credit it deserves.
Your turn: Do you have another email marketing statistic to share? Or perhaps a success story of how you’ve convinced someone on the benefits of email marketing and they’ve received a great result? We’d love to hear from you!