50 Statistics on the Latest Marketing Trends and Strategies (updated for 2021)
As marketers, we all want to know the numbers. What is working, which strategies are driving conversions, and where can I get the most bang for my buck? Below is a list of 50 incredible marketing statistics that every marketer should know.
Email Marketing
1. Personalized email messages improve click-through rates by 14% and conversions by 10%. (Campaign Monitor, 2021)
2. Personalized subject lines increase an email open rate by 26%. (Campaign Monitor, 2021)
3. Transactional emails have 8x more opens and clicks than any other type of email and can generate 6x more revenue. (Source: Experian)
4. The open rate for e-mails with a personalized message was 18.8%, as compared to 13.1% without any personalization. (Source: Statista)
5. Ecommerce customers who received multiple abandoned shopping cart emails are 2.4 times more likely to complete the purchase than those who receive only one follow up email. (Source: Experian)
6. 21.5% of an email campaign’s opens occur within the first hour after being sent. By the sixth hour post-send, half (50.6%) of opens have occurred, while nearly three-quarters (73%) of opens take place within 24 hours. (GetResponse, 2021)
7. Message personalization is the number one tactic used by email marketers to improve performance. (HubSpot, 2020)
8. More than 86% of businesses surveyed indicate that they plan to increase their upcoming email marketing budgets. (Source: Email on Acid)
9. Constant Contact surveyed small business owners and found that 49% do not use email marketing data to assist with their email marketing campaigns because they do not know where to begin. (Source: Constant Contact)
10. Email delivers $36 for every $1 spent. (Hubspot, 2021)
Omnichannel Marketing
11. 15 years ago the average consumer typically used two touch-points when buying an item and only 7% regularly used more than four. Today consumers use an average of almost six touch-points with nearly 50% regularly using more than four. (Source: Marketing Week)
12. Companies with extremely strong omnichannel customer engagement retain on average 89% of their customers, compared to 33% for companies with weak omnichannel customer engagement. (Source: Aberdeen Group)
13. Omnichannel shoppers have a 30% higher lifetime value than those who shop using only one channel. (Source: Google)
14. Companies with extremely strong omnichannel customer engagement see a 9.5% year-over-year increase in annual revenue, compared to 3.4% for weak omnichannel companies. Similarly, strong omnichannel companies see a 7.5% year-over-year decrease in cost per contact, compared to a 0.2% year-over-year decrease for weak companies. (Source: Aberdeen Group)
15. Of those companies identified by Aberdeen Group as being top-performers in omnichannel strategy, 85% conduct regular training of customer care agents in the handling of omnichannel communications, and 77% store customer contact data across multiple channels. (Source: Aberdeen Group)
16. A survey of more than 2,000 US consumers indicates that consumers are most comfortable receiving more traditional forms of advertising. Following close behind direct mail and catalogs (25%), some 24% of respondents say they are most comfortable being delivered TV and radio ads. (LoopMe, 2021)
17. 50% of shoppers expect that they will be able to make a purchase online and pick up in-store. (Source: Forrester)
18. Campaigns integrating 4 or more digital channels will outperform single- or dual-channel campaigns by 300%. (Source: Gartner Research)
19. 64% of marketers cite lack of resources and investment as their top barrier to omnichannel marketing. (Source: The CMO Club)
20. 55% of companies have no cross-channel strategy in place (Source: The CMO Club)
Data-Driven Marketing
21. About three-quarters (74%) of consumers surveyed think it’s cool when a brand or retailer uses their data to make recommendations based on past purchases, and more than half (54%) are happy with an email reminder or ad about a product they’ve abandoned in an online shopping cart. (Cheetah Digital and Econsultancy, 2021)
22. Many consumers say that they would willingly share their personal data in exchange for compensation. 80% said they will trade their personal and preference data for early or exclusive access and 79% for a chance to win a prize. They also rate discounts or coupons (53%) and loyalty points/rewards (46%) as highly valuable in exchange for their data. (Braze, 2020)
23. To improve the customer experience, marketers are collecting the following types of data: demographics (71%), website activity (60%), marketing response (55%) and CRM (49%). Fewer say they also collect behavioral data (45%), location data (38%) and purchase transaction data/point-of-sale data (34%). (Alchemer and Forrester Consulting, 2021)
24. Using data-based insights to make better marketing decisions requires a comprehensive view of existing and incoming data. Nearly one-third (32%) of marketers surveyed report that a strategy is planned to have unified marketing data. Another 45% are already operating with a strategy in place while close to one-quarter (23%) say they have no strategy and no plans to implement one. (Ascend2, 2020)
25. Increasing customer loyalty, increasing conversion rates and optimizing customer journey are top objectives according to 46%, 43% and 42% of those surveyed, respectively. (Ascend2, 2021).
26. More than half (56%) of consumers say they want news and media platforms to personalize the news and content they receive based on their interests, tastes and online activity. Gen Z (70%) and Millennials (71%) are most interested in seeing personalized content, while fewer Baby Boomers (37%) are interested. (Harris Poll and AdWeek, 2021)
27. Respondents from medium and large companies, as well as small companies (<$1M marketing budget), unanimously agreed that first-party data was most important to their organization’s addressable/digital media strategy (small: 85%; medium: 86%; large: 86%). For small and medium companies, 3rd-party data was the next-most important (50% and 59% respectively), whereas large companies differed and claimed that 2nd-party data (65%) was next-most important. (Nielsen, 2021)
28. Marketers indicated that first-party data is not always the best quality or completely accurate. The share of respondents selecting “very difficult” or “extremely difficult” on a 5-point scale when asked about data quality and accuracy was particularly high among medium (43%) and large (41%) businesses. (Nielsen, 2021)
29. Data has the potential to provide marketers with a wealth of meaningful information about prospects and customers – but only if that data is easily available and accessible. Half of the marketing, IT and martech professionals surveyed for a report from Merkle state that their organization’s data is not organized for easy consumption, making it the most common technical barrier to deriving meaningful insights. This was followed by limited storage availability (39%), slow data analytics processes (38%), not being able to understand what data is most important to decision-makers (38%), data integration difficulties (38%), and data stored in disparate systems (35%). (Merkle, 2021)
30. According to CMO, 67% of marketers believe speed is one of the primary benefits of data-driven marketing, resulting in the ability to execute their campaigns quickly. (CMO Council)
Social Media Marketing
31. About one-third (34%) of US consumers follow brands they like on social media, while about 1 in 5 (18%) follow brands they are thinking of buying something from. (GWI, 2021)
32. 3 in 10 Millennials use social media in order to find or research products to buy. (GWI, 2021)
33. One of the most popular reasons consumers follow brands on social media is to learn about new products and services (57%), while another is to stay up to date on company news (47%). Consumers also follow brands on social media in order to learn about promotions or discounts (40%), to be entertained (40%), to be educated (34%) and to be inspired (32%). (Sprout Social, 2020)
34. 8 in 10 companies are investing in social media marketing in 2021, and 39% plan to invest this year. (Hubspot, 2021)
35. While the most popular platform for marketers to use is Instagram, teams are seeing the most ROI from Facebook. (Hubspot, 2021)
36. Although nearly two-fifths (37%) say they message a brand on social media due to customer service issues, brand marketers will be happy to hear it’s not the main reason consumers are messaging them. Instead, 6 in 10 are messaging brands after a great experience. (Sprout Social, 2020)
37. More than three-quarters (76%) of consumers indicate that reaching out to customer service or support is one of the actions they take when they follow brands on social. (Sprout Social, 2021)
38. Social listening is the number one tactic used by marketers. (HubSpot, 2020)
39. 41 percent of consumers who spent 2 hours or less on social media spent at least $500 on online purchases over the past 12 months, while 38 percent of consumers who spent at least 3 hours per day on social media spent $500 or more. (Source: Nielsen)
40. At least three-quarters of U.S. social media users made an online purchase within the last year, but only 46 percent of non-social media users made an online purchase during the same timeframe. (Source: Nielsen)
Mobile Marketing
41. Smartphone users overwhelmingly prefer notifications from apps related to messaging, news and information, and email and social media, but are less keen to see notifications from brands. In fact, while some consumers are open to seeing notifications from brands a few times per week (19%), once a week (18%) or less than once a week (17%), the largest share (21%) never want to receive a push notification from a brand and only 7% want to see them a few times per day. (YouGov, 2021)
42. 60% of smartphone users have contacted a business directly using the search results (e.g. “click to call” option). (Think with Google, 2019)
43. Almost 25% of companies invest in mobile optimization as a top SEO tactic. (HubSpot, 2020)
44. 33% of consumers start mobile research with a branded website. (Source: Smart Insights)
45. 68% of companies have integrated mobile marketing into their overall marketing strategy. (Source: Salesforce)
46. 71% of marketers believe mobile marketing is core to their business. (Source: Salesforce)
47. Google says 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing and 40% visit a competitor’s site instead. (Source: McKinsey & Company)
48. Mobile email opens have grown by 180% in the last three years. (Source: Email Monday)
49. Average smartphone conversion rates are up 64% compared to the average desktop conversion rates. (Source: CMS Report)
50. 57% of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. (Source: CMS Report)