With consumers’ inboxes overflowing with emails vying for their attention, consumers find only a few brand emails interesting enough to open. But one factor that may entice consumers to open a brand email is familiarity. Indeed, a recent survey [press release] from SparkPost and SurveyMonkey found that more than half of consumers always (20%) or usually (33%) open emails from brands they use.
Being a consumer of the brand does increase the likelihood of their emails being opened, but there are other features that win eyeballs. While almost half (48.1%) of consumers say they are more likely to open an email that comes from a trusted source, the largest proportion say that they are likely to open an email that has information about a deal or discount in the subject line (58.1%).
As such, the subject line can have quite an influence over the email’s likelihood of being opened. About one-quarter (23.7%) of respondents say they are likely to open emails when the subject line references the product or service being featured in the email, while fewer say they are likely to open an email with their name in the subject line (12.6%) or if it has a surprising statistic (10.7%). Despite research to the contrary, few consumers admit that they are likely to open an email with an emoji in the subject line (7.3%).
Few Consumers Learn About Purchased Products Through Email
The survey also reveals that marketers may be missing an opportunity to educate consumers about the products they buy. When asked where they usually learn about a new product or service they have purchased, only one-fifth (19.5%) of those surveyed say they learned more about the product via a welcome email from the company. This is despite welcome emails being the most common type of transactional emails sent by companies, highlighting that marketers might not be providing the impact they could potentially make at this part of the customer journey.
Instead, most consumers tend to learn about the products or services they have just purchased from research they do on a search engine (59.6%), by simply using the product (45.1%) or by reading the directions that come with the product (36.4%).
That said, when a company makes changes to its products or services, the largest share of consumers say they learn about these changes from an email from the company (36.1%) – more so than from a friend or family member who also uses the product or service (13.5%).
What Kind of Brand Emails Do Consumers Prefer?
Although 1 in 12 (8.7% of) consumers say they’d rather not receive any further emails from a brand after they’ve made a purchase, there are circumstances where other consumers are happy to hear from a brand via email. Always on the lookout for a bargain, the majority of consumers say they want to hear from brands by email after making a purchase when the brand is providing information about special deals and discounts (63.6%).
Some respondents are also happy to hear via email from a brand requesting a review of the product purchased (32.3%), with tips or tricks for using the product or service (31.8%) or in regards to upcoming changes to the product or service (22.9%). Others want to receive brand emails with purchase suggestions (20.3%) or repurchase/replenishment reminders (13.2%).
Further commentary from SparkPost about the survey can be found online here.
About the Data: Results are based on a survey of 1,124 US consumers.
