The State of Email Marketing

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Podcast, bought to you by TargetInternet.com. Hello and welcome back to the Digital Marketing Podcast. My name is Kieran Rogers. I'm Louise Crossley. And I'm Daniel Rolls. And today we are discussing the state of email marketing. So I realized I sent an email out to everyone on the on the marketing download, which I'll talk about in a moment, which is our newsletter, and said, "Have you had enough of talking about AI yet?" And what was interesting, one person said, "Yeah, I'm sick of it." And everyone else was like, "No, it wasn't me. It wasn't me. It wasn't me." It was that one I made too. But it was... Everyone else, you know, I really, it's good. It's quite good to be kept up to date. So, but I took it on board and I said, "We need to do some different topics." We've done performance marketing. We're doing email. We're doing account-based marketing and various other things, tag manager and some other stuff as well. So I wanted to take a look at the latest email stats. So we'll start off with that and then I'll come back to our newsletter stuff in a moment. So we always used to get these from Mailchimp. Mailchimp used to update them really regularly. They don't seem to have done it so much lately. Constant contact, however, publish some. And these were as of about April, May time in 2024. So this, this is, we're at the beginning of July now. Although you wouldn't tell by the weather. If you're in the UK, it probably feels like March anyway. So that's kind of okay. And if I go in here, so if I look back, I remember, I knew as... I would always say the average open rate is 21%. And the average click-through rate is 2.1%. That was what it always quoted for years. And it was pretty steady as we go through. Big shift in the average open rates are now 37.72%. And the click-through rates have gone down by 0.1% down to 2%. But bounce rates overall have gone up very significantly to above 10%. So let's just break those three downs. First of all, should we be excited about that open rate? No is the answer. And the reason for that is this is because the Apple Mail privacy thing really, really kicking in. So if you're not familiar, in your email, your email service provider sends out your email and they hide a little one pixel image in there. And when their email opens up, that pixel gets loaded. So they know, right, the image is loaded, you must have opened the email. But they also know your IP address as well. So what that means is the Apple term and I said, well, we care about privacy. And therefore, we are going to block that because you didn't really opt in for any point. So you would assume then you wouldn't know that anyone had opened the email and you would assume open rates would go down counterintuitively. They cash it for everyone. So what happens is it looks like pretty much everyone that's on an Apple device or a lot of the people on Apple devices have opened your email even if they haven't. What does that mean in practice? It means you need to re-benchmark your open rate and it's not a real number. It's just a benchmark and you want to see upward or downward movement from that point. It's a kind of line in the sand. Click through rate becomes even more important. And click through rates have gone down and bounce rates have gone up. Why is that? Two reasons. One, which we'll come to in a moment, is that getting into someone's inbox and staying in someone's inbox is getting harder. Just from the point of view that email clients like Outlook and Gmail and everything else are really good at going, this is a newsletter, this isn't a newsletter. You don't engage with this, you do engage with that. But also email reputation, which we spoke about some of these things previously, but this whole idea of how trusted is your sending address and all those kind of things, they're getting tougher as well. So if you suddenly send out a huge amount of emails and loads of them go to spam or whatever it may be, you're just not getting delivered. Increasingly, that seems to be happening. Now increasingly, sadly, there are loads of services out there for warming up email. So no, you send out a few emails and then it will warm it up and it will send out more and more and more over a period of time. It's okay, but it's also slightly cynical because it's a way of sending out load of cold emails in many cases. Now you could argue, well, if I've got a big email list and I haven't emailed in a while, that's really valid, which it is. So we've got a challenging environment that we're operating in. And I thought it's an interesting one to come back to because we've also always been such advocates of email. So Kieran, where are you with email marketing? What do you think? I love it. I really, really love it. But you know, most people are doing it really badly. So it's all about the content. An email content is king. I don't know, that's rehashing stuff that's been going on for years, but that is true. I think, I mean, in terms of the metrics and stuff, a really interesting metric that I use is the click to open rate. Yeah, that's a good point. That's really good because it sort of takes into account both. Because actually, I mean, really, yeah, you could argue, always a brand touch point if they opened it, blah, blah, blah. But we don't really know whether they opened it or not. And although some of the email platforms like Klavios gives you the ability to see how many of your opens were on Apple devices and they're potentially not relevant, it just makes it difficult to see the trends and stuff for that. Because it's a really nice attempt that they made to solve it, but I don't think they really did. So, you know, like Daniel said, you just need to work with the, you don't want to compare year on year, for sure, with your open rate. I think, but I think you can see if something's bucked the trend. So, you know, we sent an email out recently and it had almost 60% open rate, which is a lot harder than we've been seeing around the mid 40s to 50s. But then I could also see at a 25% click through rate as well. Like, that's great. Phenomenal, yeah. Right, so from an email marketing perspective, that's off the charts. Do you know what did it, do you know what drove that? Is it a special offer? Well, it was really well written content. Nice. And what I'm finding actually, I mean, this is very much with a B2C brand that I work with. But what I'm finding is that really your focus on email, and we're an e-commerce brand, you know, we've got an online shop. But what I'm finding is you need to focus on engagement. You need to get those clicks and you need to get those open rates as well, even though that stat is a little bit fudged, you can't really see the trees. It is the thing with the whole Apple email thing, it's just because it's saying that they opened it, doesn't mean that they did. But a lot of them will have at some point, you just can't see that. So you kind of write it off a little bit, like you might write off an impression. Right, it was shown, but did the user look at it? No, well, no, I don't know. But it's guidance, right? It's guidance, it's guidance. You use that to guide you. But what I'm finding actually, for me now, e-commerce brand, using Clavio, really great, it'll report. It does this thing where a lot of other e-commerce email platforms do this as well. It'll report on the revenue from an email. And it takes quite a broad attribution view of that, right? So it's going to go, okay, of the people that did open and click the email, how much did they spend over like a week's period of the email? So it's quite broad, right? And it's not going to tally with your analytics data at all, which very often when you're looking at reports, and that is going to be last-clicked data. Now, this is not what this is. You know, just because I read the email, mail may not have influenced the purchase that I made. That product might not have even existed in the email. You know, and actually, I'm finding this a lot. You know, if I send regular good quality content, and it scratches the user's itch, right? It answers what's in it for me. There's a nice payoff on that, whatever it is. That might be a really good offer, but very often it might just be great how-to content, or great behind-the-scenes content. There's a dozen different ways that you can do this. Just really informational on-trend stuff can be really, really good. As long as I'm getting that engagement, I'm laughing. Right, and actually then when you do have an offer, okay, because your reputation's better with all those senders, and the inbox inspectors like Gmail and Outlook, they get to know, actually, these people regularly open this, it's important. I get payback. I get payback on that, but you can't, in my opinion, measure a good e-commerce email program on the sales that it makes. More often than not, when I send out an email, people buy stuff I've not even talked about, but it was a touch point, right? See, I mean, take a look at your own email data, and you'll see this. It's like, well, you were really pushing that promotion. It's great, we got, you know, we got two, three grand's worth of sales off the back of this email. Yeah, but what did they actually buy? Did they buy the thing you were talking about? Did they buy other stuff? More often than not, the majority of them are buying other stuff, but they're used to it, that touch point reminded them, and Bosch in it all went. So it's a bigger game that's a foot, I think, in my view. Yeah, something you said to me before, that always resonates, is that see email as a social channel. Yeah, it is. And that's what we just started with on Newsletter. Yeah, that you would see as a two-way communication, and I'm amazed by how well that's worked. So we always do a thing. The intro paragraph is saying, what have we been up to? So it kind of gives us an opportunity to plug what we're doing without doing a kind of salesy thing. They might have three bits of tools, tips, or insights that might be interesting to people. Quite often not our stuff, stuff on other people's websites. And then I always ask a question at the bottom. And the last one I did was like, have you had enough of AI content and so on? Just so many people answer. So, so many people answer. And I suddenly having two-way conversations with people, and you do build relationships with people that way, and they end up coming on courses and all those sorts of things. So it does, it works beautifully. I think that technique works particularly well if the email's coming from a person. Yeah, it comes from me. And this is something a lot of brands need to work out for. But seriously, I've said this before, but you might not have heard it, so I'm going to say it again. Seriously, if you are still sending out emails, we do not reply at email addresses. Yeah, you should be taken outside and shot, actually. Yeah, you should. Well, that's a bit harsh. Well, actually. But you should have a stiff word with yourself. Yeah. Because you're missing, you're leaving a lot of money on the table. You really, really are. It's ridiculous, because it's basically saying, "Let's just go away. We're not, we can't be bothered. We're not set up to deal with customers." Yeah. And it's like, "Wow, you're not special enough to get a reply, a response." And it's such a missed opportunity. We still get it now if we email somebody, and they come back and they're like, "Wow, you actually reply." Yeah, because we say, "We replied to an email." And then we do, and they're like, "Oh, you do really? Okay." People don't believe us. There's this kind of, I mean, it's a lot of emails to deal with, but it's, it works. It's not that much, though. When you look at the volume, we're sending out really. And if 50 of your customers or 100 of your customers, 200 customers or 2,000 want to speak to you, should you not be speaking to them? Yeah. Why wouldn't you want to speak to your customers? That's the whole point. People buy from people. Yeah. That's it. So, on that note, one of the things that we've done is that we do these live sessions every month. So, once a month, we do an update on social algorithms or GA4 or chat to people, whatever it is, to give you a little kind of later. It's like a live webinar session. But we're changing the format so that half an hour is that, and half an hour is people asking questions of anything. So, I might be talking about social algorithms, and they want to throw a GA4 question at me. They can. And it's a little bit of free consultancy every month as well. Now, those live sessions are exclusive to, two groups of people, are paying members. And if you're not a paying member of Target Internet, I mean, come on, it's £25 a month. The amount of stuff you get is ridiculous. So, should it be taken outside and shot now? No, that's a bit much. I'm not going to go that far. That's a really bad sales campaign, isn't it? It's like, buy our stuff or we will, you know. So, that's not good. But you've totally put me off my flow there. I'm sorry. It's unusual that you do that. But yeah. Actually, it was inappropriate, but it's just had high comedy value for me. It did. I hope everyone else enjoyed it as well. The key thing is, if you're not signed up, then please do sign up. But if not, the other group that get access to these live sessions are our newsletter subscribers. So, targetinternet.com/newsletter, and you'll get access to these monthly. And you can come in and ask the questions that you want to ask, like, why do you bother podcasting with Kiran? He's so mean to you all the time, anymore. The other thing we've got is if you want to sign up to Target Internet, you know, cost of living crisis, all that kind of stuff, we have got on the website the Persuade Your Boss Pack now. And we're going to send it out in the next newsletter, which is basically, here is the justification of why your boss should be spending 20 pounds a month on keeping your skills up to date. And so on. So, we'll send that out in the newsletter. But yeah, targetinternet.com/newsletter, and get signed up if you're not ready. Right, this is the next thing. This is where we bring AI in as well. All of the AI platforms, so in Gmail, Apple Mail, and in Outlook as well, are starting to add to the top of every email an email summary. So, you'll get a big long email that someone spent hours crafting, and it'll go, this email is about this at the top. Okay, and we're going to see how useful they are. But what it means is from an email perspective, if you're relying on rambling and very different narratives and things like that, it may not work anymore. Now, with that in mind, this is going to be a real moving feast. And I think from an email user, in terms of saving time, that could be a really good thing. But it's kind of like, you know, when you read a book, and you get a lot of value from it, and then someone gives you the four paragraph summary of the book. The four paragraph summary is never going to do it fully justice. It's a very, very hard thing to do. So, I don't know if this is good or bad. I mean, I mean, too much, because I am someone, the email is still the bane of my life, and I go through phases with it. But at the same time, I appreciate good writing and narrative and those kind of things. So, we'll have to see which direction this goes in. Kiran, you went on a time management course recently. And I'm just talking about, you know, email is a bit of a bane of my time. Yeah. And so, don't go into it too much detail, but this whole urgent, non-urgent stuff. And everyone knows about it, maybe a little bit, but I thought the stuff you brought was really interesting. Yeah. So, you've got, I forget what they call the quadrant, but you know, when you draw across in a paper, and your first column is urgent and important, that first square. And the one below it is urgent, but not important. And then over the other side, you've got not urgent, but important. And then in the final bottom right hand corner, you've got not urgent, not important. Yeah. Right. One of the things that we explored a lot on this course was the relationship between those quadrants, which is new for me. I've never looked at that before. And it blew my mind a little bit. So, I think this is really relevant for marketers. It's a marketer. And for emails. So, it makes me, it's really mind-blowing. And for emails, yeah, too. As a marketer, we're very, I think we're all very focused on the important and urgent. And actually, I've begun to realise I thrive on an emergency. I love it. It makes me feel important that I can help and do stuff. We also tend to do a lot of not important, but urgent stuff. Very often, this is stuff you pick up from other people with their own agendas and stuff. It's not really going to move the needle from a marketing perspective, but someone else is demanding it. And then you've got the important, but not urgent stuff. Now, none of us spend enough time there. Like, that's the stuff where, you know, you're going to plan out. Yeah. Big thinking. You're going to plan out the next quarter or the next season or the next year's campaigns. You're going to, you know, really get stuck into your budgets and make sure you've done the work on what's needed in order to achieve X, Y, Z. And have, you know, projects and plans and stuff all that. Now, if we spend enough time there, because why? Because we've never got enough time. And then that other quadrant, the kind of not important, not urgent. It's really interesting. What we were taught was, look, if you spend too much time on the urgent important, and the important and not urgent stuff that everyone else dumps on you, you end up ridiculously busy, right? You will get to the end of your working days and you'll be exhausted. Stressed out and exhausted. Where do we all go when we're like that? We go to not urgent, not important. We doom scroll. We watch junk TV. We play games on our games console or whatever you want on your phone, whatever you want. All of these things are actually not really adding to your life. A small amount of them is good, right? A little bit of them, switch off. It's a thing, a little bit is good. But it's not time bound, right? It's not time bound. So yeah, half an hour, probably big, half an hour on Candy Crush. Probably sort you out. But no, you can spend three, four hours. I'm more of a Toon Blast myself. Oh yeah, Toon Blast, whatever it is. Or, you know, Love Island. You know, they're all great things in moderation, but we don't. We binge watch entire series. And before you know it, it's like half 11. And you've got to be up early in the morning. And it's like, ah, and you just repeat the cycle. You're just adding to the stress. Some people are probably feeling very personally attacked right now. Well, I don't know. Is that you, Lou? We were talking about Love Island. Social media. Half 11, I was quite pleased. I'm like, it's normally two in the morning for me. How much time are we all spending on social media? Is it really important? Does anybody get, here's the thing. He encouraged us to write our speeches for our 85th birthday. And speeches other people would write about us, right? Is spending more time on social media going to be something you're going to want to crop up in that? It's not. Because this is not important. And this is the thing. And actually, it just, I think you've got to have the discipline, right? To recognize when you've got a problem with these things. To recognize when you have an addiction to not important, not urgent things. Well, I was just going to say email is... Preventing, yeah. And email can be one of those. It's the big cause of it. It is, yeah. And he actually gave us a really great case study. I think it was Green and Kings, the brewery. It's played for my mind. And the managing director, the CEO, got everybody in that business together a few years back and announced that he was removing email. And there was outrage. People were like, "You can't do that." And I was like, "How could he do that?" I know, I know. I was shocked. And he was like, "I think you'll find I'm the CEO." And I can. And I just have. I'm turning it off. I'm turning it off because you're all wasting way too much time. I'm turning it off because you're all copying each other in on numerous messages that you don't need to be copied in on it and wasting even more time. And actually you'll want to get back down to basics. And he reminded them all that it was, they've been going 160 years. And for most of that, none of them had an email. So the business totally could operate. What was interesting that they found that actually certain functions within the business improved immeasurably, particularly sales. Why? Because in that business, the sales team were actually not sending emails because they couldn't. They were actually getting in the cars and going out and meeting there, the people that they were supplying. And guess what? People buy from people. People like relationships. And that gave them an edge over all the other suppliers of just sending the email. So I think there's a case for that. Actually, I've come across this before. I did some work from Home Fragrancy in Brown. They did fantastically well during lockdown. Like their business grew enormously because they're selling aroma diffusers and oils and stuff to go with it. But post the pandemic and everybody going back to work, no one wanted all of those home-sending solutions. And business plummeted, particularly their B2B business. And actually, I was helping the MD with some of his online stuff to kind of get it back on track. What was really interesting is he was forced to, because that had such a big drop in revenue, he was forced to go back to the floor. And what he found horrified him because actually all the sales team had gotten really lazy during lockdown because they couldn't meet with the companies and people they were supplying. Some were supplying some really big brands as well. They just weren't meeting. They were just sending out emails. They carried on like that. Now, when you do that, the only point of difference is price. And what was happening was the people they were supplying were just, "Well, let's just get it cheaper from China." Because they weren't getting that layer of expertise that was so important. And the relationship had just stagnated to the point of death, actually. And it cost them millions in revenue. So I think there's really something to be said for this. Like, don't lose touch with that human element. What could you do? And actually, the Green and King one, I believe he did turn it back on after six weeks. But he did say, "Anymore of the nonsense starts happening again, I will turn it off." Well, that's your discipline point, isn't it? Don't try me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a finding way of managing this stuff. I mean, on this, finding ways of managing it and working out what works and what doesn't, all those kind of things. Copilot, which is the chat GPT stuff that's built into Office, I've just been playing around with Copilot a lot more now. And it's kind of, it's nice because it's baked into everything you're doing. And what I'm really excited about is AI, which is Apple Intelligence, which is the stuff when it's baked into all of your Apple operating system. But for now, we've got Copilot and it will do the same thing. It will summarize an email from you. It will draft a response. We've given all the context. It will coach you to improve an email, tone of voice, that kind of stuff. But my favorite bit, you know how bad the search is in Outlook? You know you've got an email with a particular, and you just can't find it anywhere. You've now got chat, and it's kind of like an interactive search and it works and you can find stuff. So yeah, so that's very pleasing. So have a look at that if you haven't played around with it yet as well. A last couple of things on this, I guess, as well is that the person that I've really gone to for insights on this, I went to inbound the HubSpot Commons a couple of years ago. This wasn't the last one, the one before that. And that's got to be one of those things. Have I mentioned I went to inbound? I've been having a lot of times, I've gone on about this. It's because I get so much good stuff from it. Actually, Daniel, you have. It's another drinking game. Drink every time Daniel says you went to inbound. Every time he mentions I went to inbound in Boston. And the guy that I saw speaking, Joe Swiddleson, who runs SubjectLine.com, and heads up the email guru conference, in his presentation, they're brilliant. Because he's not only got amazing data insights. He's a phenomenally good and funny presenter as well. But he does it in a way that you kind of think that he hasn't prepped. He's like, "Oh, look at these slides. Can you even read those? They're terrible." And you can see the amount of work that's gone into it. It's amazing. And he always shows that. So this week, this is working in email. And he'll show you a particular type of SubjectLine. He's saying that won't work in two or three weeks or three months. But at the moment, this is what works. And he's really good at getting those later insights. So if you haven't been, go to SubjectLine.com, go to their blog, Constant Updates of Data with that stuff. And again, the email guru conference is the biggest online email conference globally. It's free and it's on the 16th of 17th of October, 2024 as well. So if you just search email guru, you'll find that all put into the show notes as well. Targetinternet.com/podcast. Again, thank you for listening. If you haven't signed up for the newsletter, for goodness sake, targetinternet.com/newsletter, go and sign up. And if you haven't signed up for Target Internet, get that, persuade your boss pack, and get your boss to buy it for you as well. Thank you for listening. And we'll see you again on the Digital Marketing Podcast.