Every association needs to fully utilize multiple marketing techniques in order to gain members and allow the voices of their constituents to be heard. Email is a valuable marketing tool for doing just that. Whatever your message, email campaigns can be targeted and tailored to reach your intended audience much more effectively.
Less than two months ago, Informz reported on some interesting statistics in its “2016 Association Email Marketing Benchmark Report.” What the data shows is that when you refine your marketing emails, you get far better results and get a better sense of what your members want and expect. Keep in mind that the statistics are based on averages that may not fit every association perfectly, but they still follow trends within the association industry. While the study discusses many intriguing findings, we’ve decided to highlight a few that we think your association’s marketing team will find helpful.
1. A smaller audience correlates to higher open and click-through rates.
Informz found that while 63% of all emails were sent to audiences of between 5,001 and 50,000 subscribers, emails that were sent to smaller audiences resulted in the highest open and click rates. Informz claims that this finding “supports the trend of smaller, more targeted audiences resulting in stronger engagement” (pg. 15). Accordingly, specializing emails can potentially pay off, gaining the attention of more specific members who will “click through” and not just delete or ignore the message.
2. Emails with shorter subject lines have higher open rates
Subject lines with fewer than 10 characters had an open rate 8.62% higher than that of the next most successful subject line length, 10-19 characters. Articles seem to pop up all the time nowadays about how we have increasingly shorter attention spans and don’t want to waste our time with longer texts. People actively seek out the short and sweet literature that delivers all of the necessary information in the most concise manner. Accordingly, your audience members’ judgment of whether or not your emails will be worth their time may be based more on the length of your subject line than on the words you use.
3. Mobile devices have become the most popular way of viewing emails
Mobile devices have become the most popular way of viewing emails. Furthermore, emails were more commonly opened for longer than 10 seconds on mobile devices than on desktops. This proves the importance of putting efforts towards sending out emails that are mobile-friendly. Sending out emails that will not render properly on a mobile device can result in the loss of valuable audience engagement. Thus, it’s best to always check how your email turns out when opened on a smartphone or tablet, before sending it out to your entire audience.
Conclusion
The “2016 Association Email Marketing Benchmark Report” from Informz is an interesting read for any marketer, but even more, it provides valuable information that could change how your association markets via email. Additionally, it could change the way your subscribers engage with your marketing methods. In this constantly changing, technology-driven world, it is imperative that marketers keep up with the trends. Informz’s study helps to simplify that process, and we recommend reading it in full.
What have been your observations of current email marketing? Let us know in the comments below!