Key Takeaways from the Email Marketing and Marketing Automation Excellence 2018 Report #infographic

We teamed up with Smart Insights to publish the Email Marketing and Marketing Automation Excellence 2018 report – our annual global benchmarking research. Its goal is to show the current state of email marketing and marketing automation and help marketers take full advantage of the options they have and optimize their strategy.

We also created an infographic to highlight the key report takeaways. Read on to find what they are!

Editor’s note: For the latest email marketing data and trends, check out the Email Marketing Benchmarks report and GetResponse Resources – a vault full of actionable tips and insightful content designed to get you through your marketing campaigns.

Key takeaways from the report:

The report shows both great news and some warning signs for marketers.

Email’s topping the charts.

The great news is – email marketing is still the most effective channel of all! Marketers rate it as the best for ROI – 29% say it’s good, and 18% describe it as excellent.

The return on investment encourages marketers to spend more budget on email marketing – 47% businesses plan to do so!

But, while increasing the budget, we need to use it to its full potential to keep the campaigns effective. And that’s where there’s still room to grow.

There’s still more potential to automation.

As many as 28% of businesses use only basic marketing automation features, while less than one-tenth uses all of them to get the best results. When it comes to experience, only 5% of marketers call themselves experts. If you’re not one of them but would like to be – we’ve got the right resources to help you. You can check out the Marketing Automation Hub on our blog, enroll in a free Mastering Marketing Automation email course from GetResponse University, or turn to our Help Center for some answers to your questions.

Landing pages need more love.

It’s surprising that only 20% of businesses never create dedicated landing pages. Landing pages can do wonders for your conversion rates and are undeniable lead magnets. They minimize distractions while focusing on a single goal. Let’s hope that in the future more marketers appreciate the importance of landing pages! Meanwhile, if you don’t feel ready to start creating your own, feel free to read more about them here:

Test, analyze, optimize.

Have you maximized the relevance of your email campaigns by segmenting your list? If you did, congratulations! You’re among the 47% of marketers that don’t send the same message to everyone. If your answer was no: don’t worry. There’s always time to learn and improve your business strategy. See how to get started with your email segmentation, and personalize your emails, so your subscribers know you care.

Also, 60% percent of businesses don’t proactively test their email marketing. Don’t work on your emails in the dark! Find out what works best for your audience, then implement it.

When it comes to analyzing, 28% don’t focus on any specific metrics. That’s not that high of a percentage, but we expect it to lower over time. So, track your metrics and set your goals!