3 Takeaways for Email Marketers

Often, we hear that email marketing is dead. However, the numbers continue to tell a different story. In fact, for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return on investment is 122%. Worldwide, the number of email users is estimated to be  4.4 Billion users by the end of 2023. Email marketing can feel like a waste of time from your personal inbox habits, e.g., sifting, archiving, swiping left, marking as spam, etc. But within the inbox there are those few emails that you always seem to engage with, and your customers have these preferences too. New customers and returning customers want to engage with your email campaigns and to continue to hear from you — whether that be for the love of your content or promotional emails, they’ll continue to come back if the content aligns with their needs.  We took a look at over 150 million receipts across 40 unique retailers to discover the impact of digital receipts in retail. Below, we break down 3 key takeaways for email marketers from the analysis, further showing the importance of having an email marketing strategy.

1. Email Domain Matters

An often overlooked aspect of an email marketing strategy is the domain engaged with. GMAIL domains are most common, however, they tend to drive the lowest engagement rates after opening. With this in mind, it may be worthwhile to spend extra time developing the content for these users to counter this statistic.  Surprisingly, ISP-based domains drove the highest click to open engagement. For these users, spending time ensuring that the usability of the email designs are in check will ensure their performance metrics stay up to par.

2. Different Verticals, Different Engagement

Across all industries analyzed, open rates averaged at 41% with an average click to open rate of 7%, with the highest engagement coming from the jewelry vertical and the lowest coming from the health and wellness vertical. You can view the full list of verticals and their respective open and click to open rates here.  Numerous conclusions can be pulled from this data, however, the most important takeaway is that email marketing is not one-size-fits-all. Email marketers must be careful to not compare their metrics to retail-wide findings but instead focus solely on their vertical to achieve the best results.  For example, jewelry retailers should include more feedback-centric content on their communications seeing that they receive a higher open-rate and click to open rate with a lower overall purchase frequency. Health and wellness retailers on the other hand should focus their content on regularly changing promotions and new or similar products to those that their customers are currently purchasing, as this vertical tends to have a higher purchase frequency.

3. Non-Loyalty Shoppers are More Likely to Engage

A surprising finding from this analysis was that loyalty customers are the least likely to engage with your emails. When looking at the digital receipt data, non-loyalty members were 4% more likely to open the email and 51% more likely to click inside of it.  This likely occurs due to loyalty members having a higher level of brand confidence versus their non-loyalty counterparts, however this is an important call-out when crafting an email marketing strategy. The content used for loyalty members must be compelling enough to drive that engagement, such as personalized offers, rewards point updates, special events, and more.  On the other hand, this content needs to speak to the value of becoming a loyalty member for those that have not yet signed up, as they are at the peak of their engagement with your brand when receiving and clicking through these emails.

Email is On the Rise

In a world of quickly changing technology and consumer preferences, it is critical to partner with experts to ensure your brand is equipped with the right tools to not only serve your customers but delight them.  Shoppers now expect a digital-first journey through all their shopping experiences. However, many solutions are not living up to customer standards. flexEngage offers a cloud-based receipt marketing solution that enables personalized marketing on digital receipts and online order notifications. Learn more about our products here.