Digital MarketingKey Insights: Email marketing the titanium of martech, global dips can’t curb strategy, and more

Key Insights: Email marketing the titanium of martech, global dips can’t curb strategy, and more

Revenues signal a drop while marketing technology budgets continue to shine, why email marketing is the sweetheart for marketing success, and what wins CTRs.

30-second summary:

  • The World Bank predicts that the global economy will see a 5.2% contraction in global GDP in 2020. This could mark the darkest recession since post-WW II.
  • While CFOs face the reality of revenue drops by 25%, they’re in no mood to focus on their cornflakes
  •  In fact, PwC’s CFO pulse survey shows that 50% of CFOs plan to accelerate automation and new ways of working
  • Our Pulse Survey finds that 44% of marketing leaders are maintaining their marketing budgets
  • 42% of marketing leaders are increasing spend on marketing technology
  • Email marketing remains the classic favorite for brands to drive customer engagement, tap into their customers’ minds, and influence customer experience through their inboxes
  • Special focus on industry wise share of email marketing campaigns, region-wise email marketing stats, and the most read email content types
  • The best performing email message was… can you guess it?

CFOs’ take on revenues and profits

The World Bank predicts that the global economy will see a 5.2% contraction in global GDP in 2020. This could mark the darkest recession since post-WW II. As 53% of CFOs face this reality with the fact that there will be a roughly 25% decrease in revenue and profits this year, they’re in no mood to focus on their cornflakes. In fact, PwC’s CFO pulse survey shows that 50% of CFOs plan to accelerate automation and new ways of working. 

PWC CFO survey shows drop in revenues

Global recession fails to dampen marketing technology budgets

Our Pulse Survey 2020 has been tracking marketing leaders’ focus on marketing and marketing technology budgets through March till June. These were some concrete outcomes:

  • 44% of marketing leaders are maintaining their marketing budgets
  • 22% of marketing leaders are maintaining their marketing budgets
  • 38% of marketing budgets are being allocated to marketing technology
  • 42% of marketing leaders are increasing spend on marketing technology

Marketing budget ratio assigned for marketing technology spend

Buckling up budgets for email marketing success

Our Pulse survey also identified that email marketing (49%) and SEO (53%) are hands down the front runners in the marketing technology race. 

Email marketing top marketing technology

As email marketing has been resilient, tried and tested tool for brands to drive customer engagement, tap into their customers’ minds, and influence customer experience through their inboxes, our next segment drills into details that will provide effective insights on:

  • Industry-wise share of email marketing campaigns
  • Region-wise email marketing stats
  • Most read email content types

Email marketing remains the classic favorite globally

Acoustic researchers analyzed email marketing data including – send volume, open rates, click-through rates, click-to-open rates, and unsubscribe rates across thousands of campaign customers globally. They found that the global email open rates increased at an average of 4.7% from February to April.

Consumer products companies: The most active emailers

The COVID-19 impacted each industry in an accustomed fashion and these trends are an exact reflection of these unusual times. 

The top three sender industries were:

  • Government
  • Consumer products
  • Charities

Whereas, the least active industries, for obvious reasons were:

  • Travel agencies and services
  • Retail
  • Leisure, sports, and recreation

Interestingly, if you focus on  Acoustic’s graph, you’ll notice that the trend line for “Consumer products” and “Retail” is almost the opposite, showing that April was the tipping point to the highest “high” and lowest “low” for the respective industries.

Global Industry wise email marketing trend

Regions with the highest open rates

Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, and Continental Europe were the most receptive to emails while India, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa, and North America settled at the underbelly. At an aggregate level, email marketing experienced a 16.8% average growth rate across all the regions.

Average email open rate region wise global

In terms of CTR from January through May 2020, Europe and the UK have outdone all the other geographies with a 2.9% average growth rate.

Average email CTR region wise global

Most popular email type: Globally

“An important message from our CEO” types of emails were a hit with great open rates but didn’t earn too many call-to-action clicks.

Email marketing global stats

North American inboxes were the most progressive

North American countries had a 38% jump in open rate, April vs February. While the USA and Canada specifically showed an average increase of 5.4% in their email open rates.

Business actionable emails were North America’s quarterly favorites

“How to do business with us” led to higher open rates and even more importantly an increase in click-through rates.

Email marketing North America

ClickZ readers’ choice for the week

Netflix, the mastermind OTT platform continues to pique our readers’ interest. The next hot topics remain our key insights articles and marketing strategy-centric articles.

  1. How Netflix uses big data to create content and enhance user experience
  2. Key insights: AI in Marketing Summit highlights, microbrowser advertising, and customer engagement sweet spots
  3. Marketing strategies during – and after – Coronavirus
  4. Personalization is critical during times of rapid change
  5. Five changes in social advertising for brands during COVID-19

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