With respect to the relevancy of marketing emails, the glass is either half empty or half full: The same Fluent study found that 42% of US consumers said they considered marketing emails to be useful some of the time or all of the time, while 33% said these emails were never useful.
Unsurprisingly, 64% of US consumers said they were most likely to open an email if the subject line mentioned a deal or promotion, according to a February survey by email delivery platform SparkPost and SurveyMonkey. In fact, emails that are actionable tend to do well, even if there is no direct personal benefit to the consumer; for example, 33% of respondents said they wanted to receive requests for product reviews.
“It may seem counterintuitive that consumers would be open to requests for help which would create work for them, but this is belied by the fact that consumers are looking for emails that have a clearly defined purpose,” said Jeremy Goldman, eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence and author of our latest report, “Email Marketing 2020.”
Brands must be judicious about what they communicate over email: What a brand considers to be essential information may not meet that bar for the recipient and may only present that recipient with an opportunity to unsubscribe. Only 19% of US consumers reported using welcome emails to learn about a new product, compared with 60% who said they turned to Google for such information, per the SparkPost and SurveyMonkey research. Consumers do expect brands to keep them abreast of major product changes, with 36% of respondents saying email was their primary way of learning about such changes. Ultimately, half of respondents said they unsubscribed from email lists because the emails didn’t contain useful or interesting content.
Brands must be mindful of their content—but mindful doesn’t necessarily mean overly cautious. In fact, consumers increasingly expect email marketing to take the lead on communicating brands’ stances on important issues. A strong email marketing program conveys what a brand is and isn’t, as opposed to being just a vehicle for offering deals and discounts.