Email remains a crucial marketing channel, with a significant majority of consumers preferring it for brand communications. A study by Return Path and Demand Metric highlights best practices for improving email marketing effectiveness, including the importance of engagement metrics, list segmentation, personalized messaging, optimal sending frequency, and triggered messaging. Overall, the effectiveness of email marketing is reported to be improving, with many marketers acknowledging its importance.

1. Email is still the go-to marketing
channel for many organizations—and
with good reason.
Studies show that a vast
majority of consumers
prefer email for brand
communications, and
current projections indicate
that by 2021, there will be more
than 4.1 billion email users worldwide.
Clearly, organizations must prioritize
email to maintain its effectiveness.
Email
Engagement
Email
Engagement
Are you
maximizing the
ROI from your
email marketing
initiatives?
T H E S T A T E O F
In December 2018, Return Path and
Demand Metric partnered to study
the state of email marketing to
equip marketers with data
and best practices to
improve it.
Are you looking
to further
improve your
email marketing?
This study identified many best practices
you can apply to improve your results,
which you can find detailed within the
report, but here are 5 to get you started:
Benchmark Study Report
THE STATE OF
EMAIL
ENGAGEMENT
www.demandmetric.com www.returnpath.com
Download the full report,
and bring yourself up to date,
with the current state of email
marketing today!
Metrics
A valid engagement metrics
dashboard is the first thing to
put in place when working to
improve email engagement.
Segmentation
Marketers that are not already
segmenting their email lists
should aspire to do so, because it
is a major driver of deliverability.
Personalization
AI capabilities providing
automated personalization exist
within many of the solutions
Marketers either already use, or
solutions they can adopt
immediately.
Sending
frequency
It is possible to determine the
ideal sending frequency with a
high degree of precision and
prevent list fatigue, by
focusing on the right data.
Triggered
messaging
The use of triggered
messages, sent at key points
and times in the customer’s
journey, improve engagement.
Overall email effectiveness
is improving.
As a marketing channel, almost 80% of the
study’s participants reported that email is
holding steady or improving in
terms of effectiveness.
Email remains important.
Almost two-thirds of study participants rate
email as one of the most important, or the
most important channels in use.
Engagement determines
visibility.
Over half of this study’s participants don’t
understand that mailbox providers use
engagement to filter deliverability and
visibility of their emails.
Segmentation affects
deliverability.
List segmentation, the ability to segment
lists and send different messages
to different types of
subscribers, is a
major driver of
deliverability.