Survey: 69 Percent of Businesses Spend Time and Money on Email Marketing

New research suggests that marketers are still heavily relying on email as a tactic, but their goals vary according to company size.

The Manifest recently conducted the “State of Email Marketing in 2018” survey to determine how frequently marketers are turning to email to reach out to their target audiences. The research found that most businesses (69 percent) spend time and money on email marketing. Companies send a variety of emails, but product/company updates (69 percent), promotional emails (69 percent), newsletters, (68 percent), and event invitations (65 percent) are the most popular.

When it comes to goals pertaining to email marketing, the statistics varied according to company size. For example, 34 percent of marketers from companies with 101 to 500 employees said that their main goal is to grow/retain customer base. This is compared to just 27 percent of marketers with 501+ employees who said the same.

Just 13 percent of marketers from smaller companies (101 to 500 employees) wanted to increase engagement, while 25 percent of respondents from 501+ companies said the same.

“As a consumer working with a big company, it’s easy to get lost,” says Ben Bradley, managing partner and creative director of digital marketing agency Macon Raine. “Larger companies want people to continue to interact with the brand and not get lost or feel like just a number, so engagement is important to them.”

Email Engagement Remains a Priority for Marketers

Improving email engagement remains a top priority for marketers across the board, according to previous research.

Ascend2 conducted a survey titled “Email Marketing Engagement” and discovered that for most marketers (55 percent), their top goal is to improve email engagement. This was followed by increasing sales revenue (48 percent) and improving the quality of leads (45 percent).

Lead quality (45 percent) was considered to be the main barrier to email marketing success. This was followed by improving email engagement (43 percent) and increasing conversion rates (43 percent).