Email marketing still works, but it only seems to work when it’s not abused. That’s the key takeaway in a new report from eMarketer.
As to be expected, research shows that internet users are the most likely to unsubscribe from email lists because they get too many emails in general. In an October 2016 survey, MarketingSherpa asked US adult internet users why they unsubscribe from email lists and found that 25% did so because they received too many emails.
The question then remains how many emails is too many. According to an August 2016 survey from Mapp Digital Internet users said that receiving emails twice per week was the preferable amount, while the second most popular response was receiving emails only once per month.
It’s not only the email frequency, but also the content of the email that swayed consumers answers. if an email was irrelevant to users, if it’s constantly pushing a sales message, or if the content of the email is boring or repetitive one in five users said they would unsubscribe. And apparently emails aren’t that useful to users in the first place. According to October 2016 research from Fluent LLC, only 15% of email users said they find marketing emails “often” or “always” useful, 29% said they were sometimes useful, and more than half (57%) said they were “rarely” or “never” useful.
eMarketer analyst Jillian Ryan explains, Maintaining a high level of list health and subscriber quality, as well as including relevant, personalized messaging, can combat some of these (email marketing) concerns.”
