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The Digital Marketing Podcast
5 Email Marketing Stats to Boost Your Email Marketing
00:24:10
In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast the team explore five essential email marketing stats to boost your campaigns. Highlights include: Crafting Captivating Subject Lines: Discover the magic of "power words" and how small changes can...
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- [00:00]
A
Hello and welcome back to the digital marketing Podcast brought to you by targetinternet.com My name is Kieran Rogers.
- [00:08]
B
I'm Louise Crossley.
- [00:09]
C
And I'm Daniel Rolls.
- [00:10]
A
And in this episode we are talking about 5 email stats to boost your email marketing.
- [00:24]
C
Okay. So this has come from several presentations and stats that I've read from Jay Swedelson. So we interview jay end of 2024, and Jay does a number of things, but he runs a company called Subject Line.com and he does a lot of really interesting email stats. And I, I sat and watched his presentations in awe every time by the amount of content he gets through, first of all. But also this thing about we're so focused on social media and search and all those kind of things. And actually if we spent a bit more time on email rather than just kind of pumping out, pushing out the door and thinking about how we do it, I think it's one of those channels that we keep saying this, but it's one of those channels that has a huge opportunity now. Interestingly, we're looking at our coggle thing that we look at when we're planning out these podcasts. We've got all our bullet points. And I had titled this 5 email stats to supercharge your email marketing. And we suddenly realized it sounded like ChatGPT had written it. Louise pointed out for me very nicely. So. But this comes to the point of small changes make a big difference and that's what we're going to try and show across these five stats. So mainly what we're going to talk about here is subject lines. Okay. Because good subject line. It has a huge impact on how many people are opening your email and that's going to have a huge amount of impact on people are clicking on your emails as well. Kieran, what were you going to say?
- [01:41]
A
Oh, just, I'm sure we've mentioned it before, but words are power. Right? Right. And that, that they, they do. They have a magic about them. They cast a spell on you. Language does that. And that's my, my daughter pointed out to me.
- [01:54]
C
Yes.
- [01:54]
A
That's why they're called spellings. I'm like, oh, that's good. I'm sure she heard it from somewhere else, but she claimed she didn't.
- [01:59]
C
Let's come to that power words thing then, because what we're going to do, we're going to use one of our own techniques in this. At the end of this, we will give you a link through to our power words crib sheet. So tell us what Power words are. Kieran.
- [02:10]
A
Oh, it's kind of seven kind of columns, families of power keywords, word of caution. Don't overuse them like power words. Boost, engagement rate a lot. But the same rule goes, if they're being overused, which, you know, Super Boost had to be overused a bit more, they lose their power. Right. Because the magic, we've heard it before, it doesn't grab our attention. That's the whole thing with adding a little bit of spice to, to your subject lines or to any of your marketing, actually any of your. Your headlines and whatever you can use this for, for all sorts of things. It's about getting attention. It's about inspiring people. It's about, you know, working a bit more magic, making stuff work harder. And I always used to, when we're running training courses on copywriting, I'd always challenge people. Look, take your last five subject lines and sprinkle a few power words into them. And the object of the exercise when we did it was to go as far as you could just go overboard so much. So if you put it out, you would get fired or certainly have an uncomfortable conversation with. With PR on what you just did. Why? Because actually, just pushing about and having some fun with this can be a very entertaining. But it shows you the power of spending a bit more time on what you're doing. You know, I always. When it comes down to copywriting, don't just write something once and go, yeah, that'll do. Write it again and then write it a third time. If you write everything three times, one of them will be better and you'll know it. If you know your audience, you'll know which one's better. So, you know, write three different subjects and actually, it's not. It's not that hard to do, really. AI is fantastic at giving you all sorts of variations.
- [03:52]
C
Yeah, this is a lot easier than.
- [03:54]
A
It used to be. But when you're using power words, think of them like, you know, very powerful spices. You know, one way to ruin the curry is to put too much chili in it, unless you really, really love hot chili. But it's not going to be to everyone's taste, right? So, you know, just, just. It's seasoning. Just kind of sprinkle it in there. Don't overdo it. Don't overdo it.
- [04:13]
C
I love a. I love a Kirin analogy because I can always. I can always see Louis start to smile broadly when a Kirin analogy starts, which is good.
- [04:20]
A
Did that work for you, Louise?
- [04:22]
B
Yeah, it just makes me laugh.
- [04:23]
C
One of the things about this is that this changes over time. What works now won't work in and literally no by a month, by month basis during the year, week by week even it changes by audience. So if you haven't noticed, we have got an upcoming. These are free email marketing update sessions. These, these monthly one hour update sessions that we do. We've also got a half day masterclass that members have access to. So target Internet.com sign up for the newsletter so target.com forward slash newsletter and you'll get free access to all of those live one hour update sessions with me. But also members get access to all those masterclasses as well. So at the end we're going to give this link to this crib sheet that Kieran's created of all these power words as well. But to give you the first of our five examples, increase in open rate based on when these words are used in the subject line. Now this comes from Jay Swederson's website. We're going to put the link into show notes because there's tons more stats in there. But this is says, and it says between this one, between October through the end of January. So bear in mind these are kind of seasonal as well. I know at the moment you put Anything trends in 2025, latest trends, you know, New Year's resolutions. That's why we do those kind of things fairly regularly because it, it works and it catches the mood of, of the audience. So according to these stats, the word trends will increase open rate by 34%, outlook 31%, forecast 25%, prediction 22% and direction 18% because that's what people are thinking about. They're thinking about what are they going to be doing year ahead. They're planning, they're thinking about those kind of things. The other thing with this, interestingly, if you're writing a blog, they're going to go digital marketing trends and now it's 2025. We might write digital marketing trends for 2026. If I publish that in August, people look at it and go, that's ridiculous. If I publish it in September onwards go, oh, that looks nice and up to date. Although it's complete nonsense, but you see a lot of it kind of out there as well.
- [06:19]
A
So.
- [06:19]
C
So yeah, those kind of words will improve things.
- [06:21]
A
Now I'm split on doing that only because it's a nightmare when the following year comes around and you have not only a ton of redirects to put in place, but then you need to remove for SEO, you need to Remove all, all those links that point to the old one so that it points directly to the. To the new one.
- [06:38]
C
I have made a rule for myself that we will not publish something that talks about the following year until the December. So if it's December and you talk about SEO Trends 2025, I think that's acceptable. If it's September, I think you're gaming things.
- [06:52]
A
Where'd you. Where'd you stand with putting the year in the actual URL?
- [06:56]
C
Don't do it because you'll end up. I've made the mistake. One of our most popular pages in our website. I think it's best play YouTubers of 2022. We then had to redirect it every year and change it and all sorts of things. And the thing is, the second someone sees 2022 in the URL and Google for some reason always brings the 2022 up, even though it's a 2025 version. It just puts people off even if the text says 2025. So yeah, it's a. It's a thorny one. Be careful of it. The other thing is if you keep changing it each year, you're not getting the same link equity that you would have got from an SEO point of view. So yeah, you can cause yourself lots of headaches as well. The next stat is extreme words. And this works. B2B B2C. So business and consumer. And again, looking at improvements in, in open rates when you put these into your subject line. But things like last as in the last, available as most, best, final, biggest. So you can kind of see the context. But I just want to make this point the difference between clickbait and effective clickbait makes an untrue promise. So ClickBait is the 12 most shocking celebrity moments. And you look at them and go, that's not very shocking at all. Whereas actually the 12 most shocking celebrity moments and they are shocking. That's not clickbait, in my opinion. That is just encouraging you to get some really juicy content that you. You find really interesting. So I think there is a, there's a balance and you see it used in so many different places. I think if you're manipulating someone using the subject line, then it's clickbait. Whereas if it's just true, this is the last time you're going to get this offer. This is an exclusive special preview, then great. If it's not, if it's just the same price you gave two months ago, that, that's the balance. Kieran, you do a lot of e Commerce. Where do you stand on this?
- [08:45]
A
Yeah, no, I'm all for it, actually. It varies a lot from audience to audience, actually. And again, if you overuse certain powers. So years ago when I worked at Lizzelle, we discovered that the word discover was a magic word. So you'd have subject lines like, discover the joys of super skin moisturizer. And people are like, oh, that sounds good. Yeah, I'm gonna discover it. It's embedded in it. Is the essence of something in it for me, I suppose.
- [09:14]
C
But also, you're the first. You're gonna have notice that other people don't know.
- [09:18]
A
Well, potentially. Or maybe it's just new to you, right? Everybody loves a bit of newness. It might have been out for years, right. But it's new.
- [09:24]
C
New to me.
- [09:24]
A
I've only just discovered it. So that. That we discovered that that would boost our open rate by, you know, 15, 20% if we used it. So we started using that a lot and suddenly we termed it discoveritis. And it started to lose its, its power because we overused it. Right. So this is the thing. So I'm a great, I'm a great believer. Not enough people, a B, test the subject lines. It's so easy to do. And frankly, you're missing a real trick if you're not. Not doing it. We say this every year, and every year the people, oh, well, I was just busy. Cause you're so in such a rush to get the next one out and get it over the line. It's like, no, Every time you send out an email, you can learn twice as much about your audience and their, their behavior if you, if you go down this route. So you know things like last and most and best and final. I get it. But there'll be specific terms for your audience that really work well. Like, you know, and we find this with pay per click as well. Sometimes you would deliberately go after quite technical words that only a few niche like software engineers would use. Why? Because software engineers are who you're after, right? And actually that means you're only going to get clicks from people that you want that are likely to convert, rather than clicks from anybody just trying to find stuff out. So this whole thing of, I suppose it's about. For me, it's about that integrity meter, really, to avoid that kind of clickbait thing. Like, you need to be honest with yourself and say, am I, am I over egging it? Am I over bigging this up or is it genuinely good? And I think sometimes you can suffer from just too Much energy, constantly in the wrong directions in your subject lines. You know, remember your audience, they're on the receiving end of this and if you do things to them with the subject line, they won't like it. If the subject lines do things for them much, much better. So try and use that as a bit of a, of a guiding light really, because I think it's really, again, it's really easy to over spice these or to overdo stuff and that can be very, very destructive. And actually what we're trying to do is boost your email marketing, not destroy it. And a bit too much. You can try it very quickly.
- [11:27]
B
I also think, like, you can test things that are really out the box and it doesn't just have to be tweaking different words and seeing what effect that has. And an example I saw recently was McDonald's where relaunching their McRib. But how they'd done it was they sent an email and they sent a push notification to your phone. But the email subject had in square brackets at the beginning of it it said test email and then it said McRib and had a date. And when you clicked on the email, all the images and stuff were broken and it was an empty email. So it was as if they were like testing something and you didn't quite get the full picture. But because it had test email on it, you were instantly like drawn to it. Because people are curious, aren't they? So you just want to find out what's going on. And then everyone was talking about it on Twitter and everyone's like, oh, I think the mag group's coming back.
- [12:15]
A
It is interesting.
- [12:17]
C
Well, I think if you, if you know the Maghrib isn't there now and it's going to be there in the future, it's kind of highlighting the fact that, oh, it's missing. This is a test. Are people interested? And they are. And you've tested demand.
- [12:26]
A
Oatly did this brilliantly with their whole spam, didn't they? Spam by Oatly. Do you remember that campaign?
- [12:32]
C
I didn't see it.
- [12:32]
A
Oh, I mean it was amazing. But they, they really went down. They had massive like four 14 foot high billboards, train stations and stuff, like encouraging people to sign up for Spam by Oatley. And it, and it really played on the whole thing that you know, it was being done badly and it would be like, dear Bracket's first name, welcome to spam by deliberately doing it. And it was genius because it was bucking the trend.
- [12:57]
C
Well, the thing with this, because we get these emails every day saying, can I be on the podcast? Like hundreds and hundreds of, um, the. The one I now get is dear first name. Ha ha ha. Not really. And it's like, yeah, all right. Overdone the first time.
- [13:11]
A
You can't overplay it. He loses his magic. That's the thing. Be original.
- [13:15]
C
Well, this. This leads us on to the next one, which is. Which is interesting because it works business and consumer. So mid subject line capitalization. So having a subject line and just capitalizing a word or a phrase mid subject line to highlight that phrase, what it really comes down is scannability. Right? So you're going for your inbox. And what tends to happen is if you've got a line of subject lines, if you suddenly got capitalization, it does grab you. Now, according to the stats again from. From Jay Swederson, that business increased open rates by 16, consumer 21 at this time. And that's the good point, is that when these stats were done, that might not work anymore because the fact that actually people have got kind of fed up with it. But the point that's made is that you think, well, is that not a bit spammy? Will that go to spam filter? No, capitalization doesn't make you go to a spam filter. It's a bit of an old myth, but I think it's the same thing as, like, you can test this and see if it works for your audience, and you can see if it works now, will it still work in six months? Is. Is really important.
- [14:11]
A
Like a really key thing on this, I think, is use your tools to help you with this, because there's nothing like looking at your. Your subject line and your preview line in multiple devices on multiple.
- [14:22]
C
Yeah. See what they look like in practice.
- [14:24]
A
Yeah, I absolutely love email on acid. I've paid for a subscription for it, and I love it to bits because it gives me so much power on that. And I can actually see exactly how it works. And they've got some really great wizards that sort of walk you through, like, pluses and minuses and have you structured it right? And is it gonna, you know, meet the requirements that a lot of systems out there go through your SPF and dkim and all the rest of it, all those protocols that help your stuff just get delivered, but. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. So email and acid and litmus, as.
- [14:54]
C
They say, litmus.com as well. Yeah.
- [14:56]
A
But I have to say, I. I just find email on acid, the interface just so much better, unfortunately. And that's hard Because I've loved litmus as you. If you listen to podcasts, I loved it for a long time but for me, email and acid, I've just picked it. It just seems to be a much more functional tool if you're sending a lot of emails.
- [15:15]
C
Random. Random thing for you. Swido. So if you were doing reporting on email, by the way, you could use Swido. Swido is a favorite of Kieran's for. For bringing this stuff in. I got a random parcel over Christmas and it was a very nice Swido hoodie. So thank you very much the people from Swido. Did you not get one, Kiri?
- [15:31]
A
Now? I did not. Gerald, why are you giving Daniel? It's because you're more influential than I am.
- [15:37]
C
I think it's probably because on the other one it's just because the fact that maybe they thought you were based here so they sent it for you and I've just stolen it. Maybe it wasn't even for me. So I'm gonna wear next time recording I'm gonna wear your hoodie. This to upset you and I'm going to hold a Target Internet mug that you haven't got and a. And a, you know, a memory stick you haven't seen.
- [15:55]
A
I have to put out with sea listness.
- [15:57]
C
Do you know what, Kieran? I have got something for you. I've got a gift with. There is there. There is a random one off Target Internet mug that only one exists in the world. It'll be worth millions in the future. I'm going to send it to you. I'm going to send you that QR.
- [16:11]
A
Code on the bottom that says.
- [16:14]
C
But it's. I always dreamt different to the others. It was an experimental one. So there you go.
- [16:18]
A
So as long as it's not a jar of pickled onions.
- [16:20]
C
Oh, we don't want to go there.
- [16:22]
B
No, that's a. That's a whole other story.
- [16:24]
C
Kieran injured himself with a pickled onion over Christmas. I. I don't think we want to get into it too much. But anyway, he managed to actually seriously injure himself with a pickled onion. So anyway, if you're interested, get in contact. This will just show how people are they interested in Kieran's wild anecdotes?
- [16:39]
A
No one cares.
- [16:39]
C
Targetinternet.com podcast drop us a. Drop us a message and just. And we'll tell you about it if you're interested. In fact, I'm gonna put it as well get that trending sign up for the targetinternet.com newsletter targetinternet.com newsletter and I'm going to put in the pickle story in the newsletter. So There you go. Ms. Move swiftly on. You're invited. So invitation emails do better. This is particularly in the latter part of the year. We want to be invited to stuff, but you can test it out so you know you're invited, exclusive invite, all those kind of things. Consumers up 28%, open rate and business 32%. Now, I think this plays in a little bit of a thing where with business, particularly if I'm invited, I'm checking, oh, is this an actual invite? Is this a functional email? And I think you've got to be careful of this one as well. You know, you're inviting close that kind of stuff. That's fine if there is something that I'm being exclusively invited to. But people will sometimes play with that functional email and make their marketing email sound like it's a functional email. So, you know, your reservation included your order details and it's not an order and it's not a reservation. You've broken the trust barrier at that point.
- [17:50]
A
Not integrity. You're damaging, you're not, you're not boosting, you're damaging. So you know, it's a, it's a sacred bond, isn't it? Like if I let you have access to my email inbox, that's pretty, that's pretty sacred space.
- [18:02]
C
Well, let's share some stats with people because you don't, you won't get these stats elsewhere. In terms of what I'm about to tell you is that we've got the marketing download our newsletter list and of all the people on there, I know and you know, this is, I think this, I think back, this is pretty good on average compared to what I've seen previously. But over about a year period, about a third of the people that have subscribed, you lose. And I mean from the point of view, not they're unsubscribing necessarily. They just, they're not opening. Okay, now a third is good going from, from all the stats I've seen Previously, I've seen 50, 60, 80% in other cases. So I'm pretty happy with that. And actually what we're doing is we're automatically building an exclude list. So within HubSpot, our thing will say take our subscribers and then exclude people. That. And it goes through and says if you've never opened email and you've received six emails, don't, you know, don't send you any more stuff. But if you haven't opened the last six emails, don't send you any more emails and so on and so forth. The idea being that if we're sending out a couple of months, if you've not opened anything for three months, you're not interested anymore. It's disappearing into your spam folder and all I'm really doing is either irritating you or damaging my own email reputation by doing that. Now, the higher my open rating click through rates, the better my email reputation is going to be. So that's going to be good for deliverability. But also I can send a re engagement email to those people at that point and say, look, we've not heard from you. Do you want to update your contact preferences? We're not going to email you again. We give them the opportunity at that stage as well.
- [19:27]
A
And about an email, would you like Kieran's hoodie? That'll get the engagement up.
- [19:33]
C
Yeah, I'm going to get a photo of me doing various things in this hoodie. Now I'm just going to. In various locations around the world. Everywhere I go anywhere. Now I'm wearing Kieran's hoodie and I'm going to get Kieran embroidered onto it.
- [19:42]
A
Postcard from Kieran's hoodie.
- [19:44]
C
Yeah, just maybe not even me in it, just the hoodie. Doing things say a whole new game. We can start now, right? Our last, our last of our five comparison subject lines. I love this one. So open rates up 25%. Things like how do you stack up, how do you rank, where do you stand, how do you measure up, how does your savings stack up, how does the price reduction compare? Those kind of things can work really effectively as well. And I think we know this from our digital marketing skills benchmark. So if you go, how do your skills stack up against other brands about other, you know, other people that, that can really get people engaged to go and see how they benchmark against other people as well. By the way, you can do that for free still. Targetinternet.com skills and you can benchmark yourself or your team for free. What do you think of those ones, Kieran and Lou?
- [20:30]
A
I'd love to know what Louise stance on including people's first in subject lines. Like, is it too much? Do you think there's ever a cool. I don't think it, it can work really, really well if it's, if it's done right and you don't overuse it.
- [20:44]
B
Yeah, I think as long as you don't overdo something and you don't annoy people, I Don't particularly see an issue with it because I think it's more. They've taken more effort with their email and they've gone further.
- [20:55]
A
Just. You just have to be careful that your list is in good shape.
- [20:59]
C
Well, you one, you got to get it right. But if it's a consumer email, it's Exactly. If it's a consumer email. If you're selling me a pair of trousers, Daniel, we've got new styles for you. I'm all for it.
- [21:08]
A
Yeah.
- [21:09]
C
If it's Daniel, here's your latest, you know, Harvard Business Review report. I'm. I'm less kind of inclined that way. I'm not to pick on HBR at all. They're a brilliant brand, but I think it depends on the context as well. Yeah.
- [21:23]
A
Is it. So it's to do with the relationship you have with the brand.
- [21:27]
C
Right? That's it.
- [21:27]
B
Yeah. And I think it's more. It's appreciated more because you've got to look at personalization and segmentation. So if I'm being sent a really tailored email because the company has segmented their email list so they've really considered what they're sending to different people. Because, for example, say if you own a pet shop, a pet company, and you've got a pet shop, and you've got a sale, and you can then segment your list down into cat owners and dog owners, it'd be quite annoying.
- [21:53]
C
Your cat breeds. Yeah.
- [21:54]
A
I love it when. When pets at home. Pets. Pets at home. Send Womble emails. Something special for. For Womble. Womble's my cockapoo. Yeah. That's nice, isn't it? Is to do with the relationship that they have. I suppose it's the same in real life, isn't it? Sometimes you would use people's names, sometimes you wouldn't.
- [22:12]
C
But there's inherently a risk in all these things. One names change.
- [22:15]
A
Yeah, that's true.
- [22:16]
C
So I think that you've just got to be careful in terms of making sure that data is up to date and you check in with those people regularly enough so you understand that that's still what they want from that point of view as well. So I think that there's lots of opportunities, also increased levels of risk that go with it. But you're completely right, Louise, that if you're going to personalize a subject line, if your content is then not segmented and personalized as well, you've just kind of lost it. Whereas if you're saying, daniel, here's some trousers for you, and they're the right size and they're the right style and they're kind of. Yeah. Then great. I think that there's no problem with it as well.
- [22:48]
B
As long as it's part of like a really thought out approach.
- [22:51]
C
Yeah.
- [22:51]
B
And the use and it's considered and it's not okay, you've included my name but none of this email actually relates to me then I think it's fine.
- [22:59]
A
I think enough people make use of their preview text as well. It's just that extra little bit that sometimes gets shown in certain email clients.
- [23:07]
C
Alongside the they're disappearing in iOS this is the only problem in the latest them in other places.
- [23:13]
A
See that's where things like litmus and email and acid help because they'll give you analytics to show you actually how are what what tech stack are people consuming your your emails with. So it just gives you that inside inside knowledge. There's certain audiences massively over index on on some platforms.
- [23:28]
C
No, I think that's a brilliant point. So on that there's five email stats that will hopefully help you improve what you're doing with email marketing. And I think it just deserves a little bit more focus. And if you want to find out a little bit more about email marketing, we have got our masterclass but also our free live update session. To sign up to the newsletter targetinternet.com forward/newsletter and you'll get invites to all of those. And as ever, thank you for listening to the digital marketing podcast. For more episodes resources to leave a review or to get in contact, go to targetinternet.com podcast.