Social networks are first in class for email marketing, followed by religious organisations and political parties, according to new research.
The data, from Mailjet indicates that social networks understand value of email to encourage user interaction with religious organisation and political parties following suit.
New data released from email provider, Mailjet shows that despite having a direct communications link with customers built into their service, social networks and online communities are among the heaviest users of email as a tool for engaging with their contact base.
In fact, the Mailjet study shows that the average social network or online community company sent on average 303,111 emails a year.
Whereas, users from the IT services and consulting industry send just 537 emails on average during the same period. This highlights that social networks understand the value of email, as an impactful route to developing and deepening relationships with users.
When broken down further, the Mailjet data shows that the emails sent by social networks are aimed at encouraging users to interact more with each other. This is commonly achieved by sending clever prompter emails to users, such as:
(note: example is not sent through Mailjet)
This tactic aims to drive users back into the network and is clearly successful – some more established senders, enjoy average click rates of 20%, and generate traffic back to their website.
Amir Jirbandey, Inbound Marketing Lead at Mailjet said: “Social media platforms tend to capture great user behaviour data which then can feed their email marketing efforts and drive traffic back to their website, with users ready to take action. Taking one of our UK customers for example who have created a community of gamers; they engage their users through triggered emails to let recipients know when there’s a notification or reply on a content they had shared earlier.“
Comparing this with the number of emails sent from ecommerce and retail companies (see table below) shows a vast difference in terms of volume. Ecommerce users, by the nature of the company that they work, for will naturally be sending more transactional based emails with receipts, orders and deliveries. Despite the retail industry’s dependency on email for transactional purposes, on average, users from the social network industry sent almost 1 million more emails during the same time period.
Email gets political
Obama famously raised up to $690 Million in donations during the 2012 campaign through a well planned and executed email campaign. Most parties then emulated this during the General Election in the UK earlier this year. Therefore, it’s unsurprising to see politics nearing the top end of the rankings, as these organisations increasingly turn to email to successfully generate party donations and ultimately win votes.
Religious marketing
The Mailjet data also shows that religious organisations are utilising email to communicate with their communities.
Despite religious organisations forming just 0.7% of the data, it’s clear that these companies are using email to regularly talk to their community. The average user from religious organisations sent almost 150,000 emails. That’s over 60,000 more emails on average than companies from the health and fitness and travel and transportation industries. This highlights that religious organisations have recognised that email marketing is a cost effective way of reaching communities. Mailjet has seen email activity steadily increase across these users over the past four years, particularly for fundraising purposes, or, to market religious products to potential customers and increase awareness around religious dates and festivals.
