Even though social media gets most of the attention when it comes to digital marketing, email still delivers the biggest bang for your buck. And for small business owners, the Return on Investment (ROI) for email still can’t be beaten.

Not only is email better in terms of ROI, but according to a new report from Campaign Monitor, email marketing engagement grew in 2019. Furthermore, it goes on to say 38% of U.S. consumers are driven to action due to email.

The low cost and readily available metrics are a great way for small businesses to measure how their email marketing efforts are panning out. In the emailed press release for the report, Lane Harbin, director of marketing at Campaign Monitor, explains this aspect of email marketing.

Harbin says, “Marketing has evolved to become a data-driven discipline, and marketers need to actively measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and programs.” Adding, “Savvy marketers can use this information to quickly double down on areas where they are excelling and determine where they need to make improvements in 2020.”

The good news is you don’t have to be an expert marketer to make email work for you as a small business owner. The data you collect makes it possible to continually adjust your strategy until you get it right.

The goal of the Campaign Monitor report is to provide benchmarks so you can see exactly how your strategy compares.

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The 2019 Email Marketing Benchmarks Report

This report provides real-world results on email marketing from a massive data set. The data for the report comes from analyzing more than 30 billion emails. These emails were sent globally between January and December 2019.

The email campaigns in the report are from Campaign Monitor customers in 171 countries and their clients around the world.

Takeaways From 2019

The average 2019 email marketing benchmarks across all industries are:

• Open rate: 17.8%
• Click-through rate: 2.6%
• Click-to-open rate: 14.3%
• Unsubscribe rate: 0.1%
• Bounce rate: 0.7%

Here are the email benchmarks for all industries.

When it comes to open rates government organizations beat nonprofits as the top industry. Government email open rates improved by nearly 11% in 2019. Additionally, government markets also have the highest performing emails with click-through rates across multiple categories.

Some of the other industries with the highest performing emails include real estate, design/construction, agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting.

Speaking of open rates Tuesdays have the highest rates, as well as the highest unsubscribe rates. According to the report, there really isn’t a “best day” to send, which seems to be elusive. The company says, “Marketers can stop chasing an elusive “best day” and instead focus on the real answer to seeing better metrics: following email marketing best practices and A/B testing to discover the day your audience is most engaged.”

As far as the worst day with the lowest email open rates, it is Saturday (17.5%). And the worst days with the lowest click-through rates are Wednesday and Saturday (2.5%).

This result reveals you can optimize your data to create the best email marketing campaign by using the information effectively. And for small businesses with limited resources, the value of email marketing can’t be stressed enough.

Email Marketing and Small Business

Email marketing gives small businesses the ability to manage their campaigns with greater control. An integrated approach which combines new media, conversation rate optimization, marketing automation along with other tools will allow you to deliver your message to your audience economically and effectively.

Once you have a process and system you are comfortable with, you can adjust your content to meet new products and services as well as special promotions, events and holidays any time of year. Whether you are broadcasting general news to a wide audience or one-to-one communication, email marketing makes it possible.