Consumers find brands’ email marketing increasingly relevant | WARC | The Feed

Consumers find brands’ email marketing increasingly relevant

The proportion of UK consumers saying they find brand email messages useful has doubled in the past two years. 

The Consumer Email Tracker 2023 report from the DMA, based on a survey of more than 2,000 people, found that 32% felt this to be the case, compared with just 15% in 2021.

Why it matters

It’s not the sexiest of channels but consumers continue to rank email ahead of all other marketing channels for receiving brand messages for things like discounts, offers and sales (64% rank it first), new products/services (53%), and advice, information and reviews (44%).

With more people now working from home at least part of the time, professional email accounts are increasingly being used to receive brand communications. In 2021, 50% of consumers did not have a work email address but that has now fallen to 23% in 2023.

Key findings 

• Click-through rates have risen across all types of email communications: from 24% to 46% for offers, 19% to 34% for advice and information, 21% to 40% for a product/service you want to buy, 29% to 43% for order confirmations/delivery updates, and 25% to 38% for appointments/account information.
• Some 79% of respondents use their mobile to receive email communications from brands, shops, and websites (up from 62% in 2021); desktop/laptop use has declined to 37% in 2023 (from 64% in 2021).
• A third (34%) of consumers often wonder about their email addresses’ source – so companies need to be entirely transparent in their communications.

Key quote

“While squeezed consumer wallets have made it harder to elicit a specific acquisition or sale in response to marketing comms, the need to nurture customers through difficult times becomes a role of fundamental importance for brands. The email channel arguably offers unrivalled effectiveness in fulfilling this role and its relevance to consumers continues to rise” – Ian Gibbs, Insight Director of the Data & Marketing Association (DMA UK).

Sourced from DMA