The big list of sales email statistics for 2019

You need sales to maintain or grow your business no matter what industry you’re in. One of the most effective ways to reach your target audience and make those sales are through strategic email marketing.

However, investing your time and energy into your email marketing efforts alone is not enough; you need to be strategic in what you write, when you send it, and crafting the right call-to-action, amongst other things.

There are a lot of variables that go into an effective sales email. That’s why we created this big list of sales email statistics to help you highlight what’s most important in your business.

Implement these sales email statistics into your own email marketing strategy.

General email statistics

• Email use will top three billion users worldwide by 2020, and 2.9 billion email users worldwide in 2019
• 20.9% of people check their email more than five times a day!
• 58% of adults check their emails as soon as they wake up
• Nearly 40% of all messages are sent between 6 a.m. and 12 p.m; the best time to send a newsletter for top engagement is 8 a.m.–10 a.m. and 3 p.m.–4 p.m.
• 17% of Americans create a new email address every six months
• 49% of businesses use some form of email automation
• For every $1 spent on email marketing, a whopping $44 is made in return
• The average person spends four hours a week opening, reading, and responding to emails
• 89% of marketers say that email is their primary channel for lead generation
• The average ROI for email marketing is 4,300%
• Email is nearly 40x more effective than either Facebook or Twitter at new customer acquisition
• Eight out of 10 prospects want to talk to sales reps via email over any other medium

Pro-tip: Learn how to be a sales email master with this 6-day sales email boot camp.

Email subject line statistics

• 35% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone
• Including the first name of the recipient in an email subject line increases the click through rate by up to 22.2%
• 56% of brands using emojis in their email lines have a higher open rate
• The average mobile screen can only fit four to seven words max in the subject line
• Subject lines with six to nine words have an average open rate of 21%
• Email is marked as spam based solely on the subject line by 69% of email recipients
• The most effective words to put in your email subject include: demo, connect, cancellation, apply, opportunity, conference, and payments
• The most ineffective words to put in your email subject line include: assistance, speaker, press, social, invite, join, and confirm
• Adding the word “New” to your subject line can increase open rates by 23%
• Using the word "Donate" in your subject line can reduce open rates by 50% or more
• An all-caps subject line hurts response rates by approximately 30% according to Boomerang's analysis of 300,000 emails

Email click-through rate statistics

• Welcome emails have on average 4x the open rate and 5x the CTR of a standard email marketing campaign
• Adding videos to your email can increase CTRs by 300%
• The highest click-through rate for email sends is at 11 a.m.
• Personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14% and conversion rates by 10%
• Using a CTA button in place of a link increases click-throughs by 28%
• One study found that CTRs increased by 42% when the number of CTAs in an email decreased from four to just one

Email response statistics

• Getting a response from prospects is getting harder according to 38% of salespeople
• Personalizing your emails with custom snippets can double your reply rate
• 70% of salespeople give up if they don’t receive a reply to their first email
• Sending more follow-up emails can triple your reply rate
• Follow-up emails typically get a better response rate than the first email; this study saw an 18% response rate to the first email, 13% to the fourth, and 27% to the sixth.
• Messages written at a third-grade reading level compared to those that are written at a college reading level are 36% more likely to get a reply
• Only one in three messages that are longer than 2500 words receive a reply, but a 25-word email is about as effective as a 2000-word one; between 50 and 125 words is the best length for an email to get a reply
• Emails that include one to three questions are 50% more likely to get a reply compared to those that do not include any questions
• There is less than a 1% response rate for the average cold email campaign

Email open rate statistics

• Compared to other emails, sales emails have eight times more opens and clicks and can produce six times more money than other types of email
• However, only 24% of sales emails are opened
• Depending on the industry, the average email open rates vary from 15.22% to 28.46%
• MailChimp indicates emails from businesses related to hobbies receive more opens than any other industry
• Daily deals and e-coupons have the lowest open rate
• Creating a highly targeted list combined with personalization and the right subject lines can increase your open rate significantly.
• 63% of all email opens occur within the first hour of delivery
• 40% of emails are opened on mobile first

B2B email statistics

• After recommendations by either a colleague or industry thought leaders, the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences is through email
• 86% of professionals prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes
• CTRs are 47% higher for B2B email campaigns than B2C email campaigns

• 59% of B2B marketers say email is their most effective channel in terms of revenue generation

B2C email statistics

• Consumers who purchase products through email spend 138% more than those that don't receive email offers
• 70% of email readers open emails from a brand or company in search of a deal, discount, or coupon
• At least one purchase last year that was based on a promotional email was made by 44% of email recipients
• 28% of consumers would like to receive promotional emails more than once per week
• 26% of SMBs polled use email marketing for sales and just 7% use email as a brand-building tool
• Only about 30% of U.S. retail email list subscribers have actually made a purchase from the retailer whose email list they subscribed to
• Email subscribers are three times more likely to share content on social media than leads who came through another channel
• 80% of retail professionals indicate that email marketing is their greatest driver of customer retention with the next closest channel being social media
• 77% of people prefer to get permission-based promotional messages via email rather than direct mail, text, phone, or social media

Email device and demographics statistics

• 73% of millennials say email is their preferred means of business communication
• Men and women are equally likely to convert from an email opened on a desktop computer, but women are more likely to convert on a tablet, and men are more likely to convert on a phone
• The Apple iOS leads email client market share with 31%, followed by Gmail at 22% as of May 2017 based on 1.29 billion opens
• 72.9% of 18-24 year olds use their phones to check email
• A prospect or customer is 65% more likely to click through to a site/offering when they open an email on a mobile device and then open that same email again on another device
• People claim they prefer HTML emails, but plain-text emails actually get higher open rates
• 49% of all emails are open on mobile devices

Stats for writing sales emails

• The use of emojis in email marketing messages increased 775% from 2015 to 2016
• The percentage of emails containing GIFs increased from 5.4% in 2015 to 10.3% in 2016
• An effective persuasion technique is to let recipients know they are free to refuse a request sent in the email; this doubles the chance of them saying yes
• The ideal length of a sales email is between 50 and 125 words

Stats for sending sales emails

• Tuesday is the best day of the week to send email, followed by Monday and Wednesday (tied for second-best)
• If sending two emails a week, the second email should be sent on a Thursday

Consider these statistics when crafting your next sales email.

As you can tell from the above statistics, a lot goes into crafting an effective sales email. However, instead of trying to implement each into every email you create, simply keep them in mind and mull over what will work best in order to reach your overall sales goals.

Know of any other useful sales email statistics? Tweet us!