Infographic Credit: MarketingProfs.com
For all aspects of online marketing, it’s important to have benchmarks so that you know if the actions you’re taking are leading to a positive uptick in visibility, leads and sales. If certain tactics aren’t making an impact, it makes sense to spend time doing other activities. After all, the best part about digital marketing is that it’s possible to show ROI on all tactics to be able to make the choice to move onto the next tactic if you find that something isn’t making an impact.
Our goal with every inbound marketing activity is to make sure that we’re showing ROI for our clients. This includes everything that we do: blog posts, e-mail marketing, landing pages, calls-to-action, press releases, social media posts, on and off-page SEO, and so on. It all counts!
How Well Do We Stack Up Against Other Companies?
It’s important to know how well other companies are doing with e-mail marketing and what numbers to aim for when setting goals for our clients.
Today, we’ll focus on using a frame of reference for improving your e-mail marketing – all based on company size and the number of campaigns that are sent per month. This is one of the tougher marketing benchmarks to find!
Below, we’ve laid out some stats so that you can see how your results compare to other companies in the U.S.
E-Mail Marketing Best Practices
Before we get into the stats, let’s take a moment to discuss best practices.
Every hour, nearly 123 billion e-mails are sent! It’s very important for marketers to be aware of the best ways to make their e-mails stand out.
In every piece of e-mail correspondence that you send out, make sure that you include the following:
Include an image or Logo – The upper left hand side of a page is where people instinctively look for logos. Put it there to ensure that it gets the most visibility.
Craft Compelling Subject Lines – Using no more than 50 characters, include an incentive to increase open rates by as much as 50 percent. A good example of this is, “Check out our new Candles! 20% off coupon inside!” Using Capitals in The Title works well, too!
Keep it Clean – Stick to one or two typefaces. The cleaner your e-mail looks, the more people will want to read it!
Above the Fold – Keep your message and call-to-action above the fold so that all of your recipients see it. Calls to action should be repeated 3 times in the e-mail body.
Link to a Pertinent Landing Page – Your landing page should be consistent with the e-mail by matching its headline, content and copy.
Signature – Make the e-mail as personal as possible. Make it come from a real person – preferably the face of the company or the person that’s most in touch with the segment of your audience that you’re sending to. And include a headshot!
Test, test, test — Test different titles to see which one elicits the highest click and open rates.
Is it Responsive to Mobile? — Make sure that your website or e-mail marketing software is mobile-responsive so that it’s easy to read on smartphones and tablets!
Once all of this information is complete, you’re ready to send your e-mail marketing campaign. To learn about how many e-mail campaigns you should send per month, read below.
How Do Engagement or Click Rates Compare?
Results Show That Engagement / Click Rates Vary Across Different Company Sizes
–Original Source: HubSpot
Engagement rates are really what you’re after! When people actually click on the link or links that you include in your e-mail you can tell that you’re on the right track — you have tailored the e-mail to the right audience and they’ve decided to move forward with the action that you’ve presented them with, i.e., “Download this E-book” or “Watch this Video!”. Across the board, the right number of e-mail campaigns seems to be between 16 and 30 per month. Companies that send at this rate see an engagement rate that’s 2X greater than companies that send to two, or fewer, campaigns a month.
More than 30 campaigns per month was found to overwhelm. Please note that by “campaigns”, we mean targeted e-mails that are sent to a portion of an e-mail database – not a blast to all contacts.
At a frequency of between 16 and 30 e-mails per month, companies enjoy a click rate of 6.5%. So, 16-30 e-mail campaigns per month was found to be the sweet spot…and when the above results were segmented by company size, the results gained in relevance.
Engagement Rates Vary Across Company Size
Smaller companies with one to 10 employees and those with 26-200 employees had (surprisingly) similar results that mirror what is mentioned above.
Companies with 11-25 employees saw highest click rates at the 16-30 campaign/month frequency at 6.7%
Companies with 26-200 employees saw a median click rate of 6.3%.
The Exception:
Companies with over 201 employees saw the highest median click rate when 6-15 monthly e-mail campaigns were sent per month — at 7%. A lower number of campaigns than the other company sizes mentioned above.
What size is your company? Do you have a segmented list of contacts that you send to? How many e-mail campaigns are you sending per month and what is your success rate?
We’d love to hear from you!
