Email may seem like an “old school” marketing strategy, but statistics and marketers agree email remains one of the most effective marketing channels.
With 4.48 billion daily email users, there’s no question email marketing can benefit your manufacturing business. In 2021, 77% of marketers noticed increased email engagement and a $36 return on investment (ROI) for every dollar spent!
Below, we dive into the email marketing metrics for 2022, giving insight into what’s working in email marketing and how the manufacturing industry compares. We also provide a comprehensive overview of ways you can improve your manufacturing business’s email marketing campaign in 2023.
Keep reading to learn more!
Measuring open, click, and bounce rates are all powerful metrics to determine if your emails resonate with your audience. These metrics are a great place to start if you’re looking to see where the manufacturing industry stands against others and where you can improve your marketing email campaign strategy.
It’s important to note email benchmarks vary significantly across industries, so you shouldn’t compare your manufacturing benchmarks to other industries like advertising and marketing but rather use the numbers as a guide.
Let’s dive into the data!
An email open rate is the percentage of subscribers who have opened an email.
According to Mail Chimp’s 2022 Email Benchmark Report, the average email open rate is 21.33% across all industries, which is an increase compared to this 2020 email benchmark data report, which listed the average open rate as 17.8%.
The 2022 report found that government-related emails had the highest open rate of 28.77%, and other industries, such as e-commerce, came in as low as 15%.
The manufacturing industry had an average open rate of 19.82% — that’s pretty good!
An email click-through rate (CTR) is the number of subscribers who click on one or more links in your email.
The average CTR across all industries in 2022 was 2.62%, which is comparable to 2020’s CTR rate of 2.60%.
The hobbies industry took the lead with a CTR rate of 5.01%, and the restaurant industry had the lowest CTR with 1.34%. The manufacturing industry had a CTR of 2.18% — just below the average.
HubSpot’s 2022 Email Benchmark Data found 30.7% of marketers agreed new product/feature announcements have the highest CTR, and another 30.7% said the same about special offers and promotional emails. These numbers suggest readers are more likely to view emails with helpful information about how your company can provide value to them.
Bounce rate is the percentage of email addresses your campaign could not deliver because the recipient’s server returned them.
Measuring your bounce rate is integral to any email campaign because email providers and anti-spam networks monitor undeliverable emails and use that data to determine if they’ll accept your future emails.
The 2022 Mail Chimp’s Email Marketing report splits bounce rate averages into soft and hard bounces:
According to the report, the hard bounce average across all industries came in at 0.40%, while soft bounces totaled 0.58%. This percentage increased compared to this 2020 report, which combines hard and soft bounces into one category with a total average of 0.70%.
The manufacturing industry’s 2022 hard bounce rate was estimated to be 0.72%, and the soft bounce rate was 1.18%. While the manufacturing industry had higher bounce rates than the average, don’t fret — we’ll explain ways you can reduce your email bounce rate and increase your open and click-through rates in your 2023 email marketing campaign!
Did you know you can compare your company’s email bounce rate against 400+ businesses (for free) in a B2B HubSpot Email Marketing Benchmark Group? Join today to receive invite-only access to our new HubSpot Email Marketing for Manufacturing Companies Benchmark Group!
Understanding email marketing metrics is vital in determining how email campaigns perform, how to personalize email content for your readers, and understand your subscriber’s actions.
Tracking the most influential metrics, such as open rate, CTR, and bounce rate, allows you to see if you’re hitting your marketing goals for your manufacturing business. These metrics can show you if your subscribers enjoy the content they receive and areas where you can improve.
Below, we highlight key ways you can improve your manufacturing email metrics.
Your email open rate directly results from your manufacturing business’s brand reputation and other factors on your email list. When analyzing your open rate, ask yourself the following questions:
Another factor to consider when analyzing your open rate is your email subject line. Your subject line is the first thing readers see, and it should spark interest and motivate them to open the email and keep reading.
When creating your next email subject line, consider these best practices:
According to Hubspot, 35.9% of marketers feel improving their click-through rate is one of the biggest challenges with email marketing.
A key piece of advice for improving click-through rates is to focus on your email’s Call-to-Action (CTA), a hyperlink or button within your email’s text that encourages your reader to take direct action (visiting a webpage, downloading an eBook, etc.).
Your CTAs are your chance to guide your readers where you want them to go, ultimately improving your CTR. Make sure to keep email CTAs creative while also offering clear direction. Focusing on placement and CTA design (button or text) is also important.
The following are ways you can optimize your CTAs to help boost your CTR:
Pro-tip: While it’s good to provide readers with multiple CTAs, don’t overwhelm them with too many options, and always ensure all CTA buttons and links are easy to find in your message.
While a click-through rate is the total number of clicks from an email to a webpage, a conversion rate is how many website visitors complete an action once they land on the website. A high conversion rate indicates you are creating effective email content, CTAs, and website copy.
If you’re struggling with a low conversion rate, applying the below tips can turn your readers into customers.
Want to test your landing page conversion rates? Click here!
You should always pay attention to your email bounce rate, as it indicates the quality of your email subscriber list. A low bounce rate is desired and suggests a healthy and engaged audience, while high bounce rates are a sign something is wrong.
An email can be bounced for a number of reasons, including a change in jobs or retirement, a name change, or switching email providers. Keeping your email lists clean by “scrubbing” them (removing unengaged subscribers) can help keep your bounce rate low.
Outside of decreasing bounce rates, keeping a clean email list can also help:
Pro-tip: Never, never, NEVER send emails to purchase lists! Sending emails to purchased emails can harm your IP reputation and deliverability. Spam traps and hard bounces negatively affect your sender score, and rebuilding your IP reputation takes a lot of work. Email addresses should always be obtained organically.
Below are some great ways you can build an organic email list for your manufacturing business:
Looking for more tips and tricks on how to manage a clean email list? Look here!
A/B testing is beneficial when testing different versions of the same email. These tests help see what works best for your audience by adding subtle changes in the subject line or content and comparing the results.
A/B testing ideas include:
Before implementing A/B testing, keep these best practices in mind:
Just because a reader doesn’t open an email doesn’t mean they don’t like your content. Maybe the subject line didn’t resonate with them, or the time of day wasn’t ideal. This is where email workflows come into play.
An email workflow is a series of emails that are auto-sent based on the subscriber’s contact information, behavior, or preferences. Email workflows allow marketers the chance to send messages to the right people at the right time and help guide them through their customer journey.
Sending an onboarding email to new subscribers or an email that provides recommendations based on previous purchases are both examples of email workflows. If you aren’t already using email workflows, integrate them into your marketing strategy by creating one or two flows and testing and analyzing them before adding any more.
Want to learn how to create workflows in Hubspot to help build your email marketing campaign? Click here!
There’s a laundry list of reasons why your manufacturing email marketing campaign could be performing just how you want, or maybe not as well as you’d hoped. The good news is that you can use a handful of metrics and benchmarks to analyze and improve your manufacturing email marketing strategy.
Monitoring and optimizing metrics like open, bounce, and click-through rates gives you a better picture of what your audience loves and what you could change. Don’t forget to use A/B testing and email workflows to determine the best action plan and improve those metrics.
Happy sending!
Manufacturing Video Marketing Statistics to Improve Your 2023 Strategy
Video Marketing for Manufacturing Businesses (2023)