This year has been a strange year for digital marketing. Between the switch to GA4 and the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, marketers needed to remain agile in 2023. Nowhere is this more evident than in the mysterious and often confusing world of email marketing.
Litmus is bringing back its “State of Email” report to help email marketers stay on top of things after this upheaval. The team decided that at the end of the year he would create one report, instead of dividing it into four parts and releasing it regularly. Below is an overview of his first three releases.
Current state of email workflows
Want to skip the summary and jump right into the data? Download the entire thing Email workflow status report!
How does email go from idea to return? To find out, Litmus surveyed about 440 of its closest email friends. Most respondents were marketing practitioners, often working at the intersection of design, development, content, and strategy. Let's start with the amount of work.
How many emails should a marketer include in a flow?
Marketing teams rarely use only one email at a time during production. Almost 30% of those interviewed say that he is working on 3 to 5 emails at a time. With personalization in mind, there are typically two to three versions of each email. This means your email team can handle up to 15 emails at the same time. That's a lot of emails.
How do leading email marketers keep up with the relentless pace of email workflows? Around 40% of users rely on legacy emails to replace text and images. I answered. However, 42% of respondents prefer to use a library of standard components. This means that many email marketers are using methods they don't want to use.
Where is the disconnection? With up to 15 unique emails in production at the same time, it suddenly becomes clear why your team may be functioning in a way that you understand is suboptimal.
What are your priorities?
Looking to the future, what are email marketers most concerned about? The top three answers may look a little familiar.
- Extend personalization
- Implement more automation
- Improving reachability
Current state of email design
Want to know more? Download the full version Current state of email design reports To know all the facts.
The second part of the State of Email report focuses on the email design process. We received 1,224 responses, our largest number of votes to date. As in the previous survey, the majority of respondents are responsible for a variety of email tasks, including design, development, and strategy.
we design, so we
The most common email design philosophy among email marketers was undoubtedly responsive design, adaptive design, or hybrid design. This isn't surprising since most industries are pretty even when it comes to contacts who view email on a mobile device or desktop. It's safest to design emails that are optimized for both.
Speaking of optimization, what are the top priorities for email designers? Personalized content and interactive content are the two main focuses, according to respondents.
Dark mode and accessibility
Dark mode and accessibility are two of the hottest topics in the email marketing space.
That's why it was surprising to see that 33% of respondents did not code specifically for dark mode. Even more surprising, 23% said they lighten all their emails, even in dark mode. In total, more than half of marketers surveyed are ignoring dark mode.
On the bright side (just kidding), more email marketers are designing with accessibility in mind. About half of respondents said they consider accessibility in terms of fonts, text, design, and code. Only 17% of those surveyed said they did not consider accessibility at all.
What's in your toolbox?
When it comes to design, Adobe products secure the top three spots among the most used tools.
- Photoshop takes the top spot by a wide margin, with 58% of respondents using it.
- Illustrator ranks a distant second with 37% of users.
- InDesign rounds out the top three at 31%.
The survey also asked where marketers code their emails.
- Adobe Dreamweaver was the most popular choice by 29% of survey respondents.
- 26% of respondents use a text editor.
- And finally, 25% of marketers said they use a code editor in their ESP.
let's talk about something personal
Email personalization is no longer just a nifty industry trend. This is a proven way to increase conversions and send more relevant content. This is an absolute must for email marketers at the moment.
Of those surveyed, 62% of marketers use dynamic content to personalize emails. Importantly, we're seeing improvements in the following most commonly used personalized elements:
- Sender name
- subject
- copy
- Transmission timing
Conversely, images, headers, footers, and video content are the least personalized elements.
What data do marketers use to personalize?
- 68% of email marketers use name, company name, or other profile information.
- Customer segment (i.e., current or prospective customers) comes in second at 54%.
- Past interactions rank third at 44%.
Today’s topic – AI
There's no doubt that today's topic for marketers in all sectors is artificial intelligence (AI). The second survey asked respondents whether she uses AI and, if so, how she uses it.
- 38.9% of respondents answered that they use AI.
- 17.57% said they mainly use it for brainstorming.
- Approximately half of the groups listed above use ChatGPT.
- 25% of survey respondents said they are not currently using AI but plan to use it.
- One-third of respondents said they do not use it or plan to use it.
Current status of ESP report
Want to know more? Download the full ESP report To know all the facts.
In our third and latest study, Litmus takes a closer look at email service providers (ESPs). On your best days, a good ESP runs in the background, providing reliable service and reliable data to your team. On your worst days, ESP may force you to reconsider your chosen career field.
Now, let's take a look at the good and bad points of ESP.
A total of 758 users, representing all tenures and positions, participated in the survey. In contrast to previous research, the highest percentage of users were email strategists and operations managers.
Which ESP will come out on top?
Looking for a new ESP? Wondering if the grass might be greener with a different provider? The top three survey respondents this year include some familiar faces…
- Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the most used ESP by a wide margin, with 27% of the sample size using it.
- MailChimp came in second place with 19% of those surveyed.
- Hubspot followed with a sample size of 13%.
Salesforce also tops the list of satisfied customers.
- 69% of users using Salesforce reported being very or somewhat satisfied with the product.
- 61% of Hubspot users say they are very or somewhat satisfied.
- Marketo took third place with 56% of the sample size receiving a good score.
Is it grass? Really Is the other side green? The jury is out on that!
unified nation
Many marketers agree that a martech stack is only as good as its integration. The available distances can vary widely, especially if you constantly need to transfer data from one system to another, especially manually.
According to the data, the majority of users (40%) classify ESP as well integrated with other marketing channels. Only 30% report that their ESP is highly or very highly integrated.
Personalization and AI, Part 2
Personalization (and by extension AI) is at the top of every feature list introduced in the past year.
When we asked respondents what features they regularly include in their emails, they said:
- 71% personalize subject lines
- 63.7% use dynamic content to personalize
- 56% use animated GIFs or PNGs
The majority of respondents who use personalization said their ESP handles personalization very well or well. The same goes for how viewer ESP handles AI-generated content. Approximately 72% of users said their ESP supports this type of content well or very well.
Let's look forward to it
So what does this data tell us?
First, the email nerd community is small but strong. Marketers struggle with similar obstacles, headaches, and successes. Whether you're part of a large-scale operation or wearing all the hats, you're not alone.
Second, personalization is here to stay, and it's starting to look like AI could be too. If you aren't using these tools to improve your ROI, you may be missing out.
Finally, there are tools to help you if you're feeling overwhelmed. Litmus is an all-in-one marketing platform that helps you get the most out of every send.
