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The Best List of Marketing Statistics for 2021

Emily Santos
Emily Santos
Sep 30, 2021
The Best List of Marketing Statistics for 2021
The Best List of Marketing Statistics for 2021

Digital marketing is a dynamic playing field. It’s constantly evolving with new best practices to implement and technology to test.To stay ahead of your competitors, it’s crucial to keep up to date with the latest marketing statistics. For everything from email marketing to SEO, we’ve curated a fresh list of marketing trends to help your business stay up to speed. Use these statistics to better reach your customer base.

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Content Marketing Statistics

Content is top priority for most marketers because it plays a crucial role in the success of entire digital marketing campaigns. These are the top trends when it comes to content marketing:

  • A group of bloggers were surveyed in 2019 and it was found that 32% of respondents always checked the analytics of their blog posts (Statista, 2020) 
  • 56% of businesses have claimed that they want to increase their content creation spending (Content Marketing Institute, 2019)
  • In 2020, 89% of content marketers used blog posts in their content creation strategy (Content Marketing Institute, 2020) 
  • About 70 million new posts and 77 million new comments are produced by WordPress users each month (WordPress, 2020) 
  • The “ability to measure and analyze their marketing impact” is ranked as a vital priority for improvement by 61% of marketers (Demand Generation Survey, 2018)
  • About 51% of the businesses that invest in content marketing, publish content daily (The Manifest, 2018)
  • Most popular content amongst companies: videos (72%), blog posts (69%), and research and original data (60%) (The Manifest, 2018)
  • The top content marketing methods B2B marketers use to nurture their audience are email campaigns (87%) and educational content (77%) (Content Marketing Institute, 2019)
  • About 63% of marketers use their content strategy to build loyalty with their existing clients (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
  • 300 B2C marketers were surveyed and it was found that 45% don’t tailor their content to a specific buyer’s persona or stage of the buyer’s journey (Conductor, 2018)
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Email Marketing Statistics

Email marketing is one of the most effective channels for connecting with your audience and driving results. Take note of these email marketing statistics to see how your business could maximize their ROI and build sturdy customer relationships.

Subject line and open rate statistics

  • 47% of email recipients open email solely based on the subject line (AWeber, 2019) 
  • Out of 1,000 email subject lines, only 6.9% incorporated emojis (AWeber, 2019)
  • Average open rates soar above 80% for Welcome emails, making them the single most effective message you can send (GetResponse, 2021) 
  • The average open rate for email newsletter across all industries is 21.33%  (Mailchimp, 2021)

Clickthrough rate statistics

  • 2.6% is the average email clickthrough rate (CampaignMonitor, 2020)
  • The highest click rate is 5.01% which is sent by hobbies entities (Mailchimp, 2019)
  • Responsive email templates get higher click-through rates regardless of device (Mailchimp, 2020)
  • Click-throughs increase to 28% when marketers use a CTA over just a text link (CampaignMonitor, 2019)

Mobile email marketing statistics

  • If an email is not optimized for mobile, 42.3% of people will delete it (SaleCycle, 2021)
  • Accounting for 29 percent of email opens iPhone email app is the most popular email client (Statista, 2018)
  • 66% of all emails opened on mobile are read for more than eight seconds (Litmus, 2019)
  • Mobile readers who open emails a second time from their computer are 65% more likely to click through (Campaign Monitor, 2019)
  • About 1 in 5 email campaigns is not optimized for mobile devices (Hubspot, 2021)

Email spam statistics

  • 69% of email recipients report email as spam just based on the subject line (Optinmonster, 2021)
  • 47.3% of all emails in 2020 were spam (Statista, 2020)

Email personalization and segmentation statistics

  • Segmented campaigns are noted to increase revenue by 760%, according to some marketers (Campaign Monitor, 2019)
  • About 30% of marketers surveyed said they use audience segmentation tactics to improve email engagement (HubSpot, 2020)

Email engagement statistics

  • 60% of email recipients said they are likely to engage with an interactive email (Dyspatch, 2020)
  • Over 50% of email recipients hope to interact with content in their email (Dyspatch, 2020)  
  • iPhone Mail (34.2%) and Gmail (30.7%) are the two most popular ways to read email (Litmus, 2020)
social-media-divider

Social Media Statistics

Social media marketing is a great opportunity to build your brand and drive website traffic. Use these statistics to learn how marketers are using social media to boost their business.

  • Facebook Groups are currently used by 18% of marketers (HubSpot, 2020) 
  • In April 2020, social network via any kind of mobile phone was accessed by over 98% of Facebook's active user accounts worldwide (Statista, 2020) 
  • LinkedIn's number of users in the U.S. reached 160 million, in April of 2020, making it the country with the most users in the world (Statista, 2020) 
  • The social channel with the second-highest ROI among marketers is Instagram (HubSpot, 2020) 
  • By 2023, Instagram is projected to hit 120.3 million monthly active users in the U.S., which is up from 107.2 million users in 2019 (Statista, 2020) 
  • In 2021, 82 percent of the population in the United States had a social networking profile (Statista, 2021)
  • The number of worldwide social media users reached 4.2 billion in January 2021 (Statista, 2021)
  • Compared with one year ago, 61% of B2B marketers increased their use of social media for content marketing purposes (Content Marketing Institute, 2019)
SEO-divider

SEO Statistics

SEO helps explain how your customers or prospects are finding out about your brand and purchasing your product. Optimizing your SEO strategies are the key to driving those conversion rates. Take a look at the statistics on how businesses are leveraging SEO.

  • Google currently has 86.86% of the search engine market (Statista, 2021)
  • According to 49% of marketers, organic search has the best ROI of any marketing channel (Search Engine Journal, 2018)
  • The #1 result in Google gets about 32% of all clicks (Backlinko, 2019)
  • Google organic search is responsible for 59.2% of the world’s web traffic (Sparktoro, 2018)
  • About 25% of small business websites don’t have an H1 tag (Fresh Chalk, 2019)
  • Over 5.5 billion searches are performed daily on Google (Ardor SEO, 2021)
  • Nearly 91% of pages receive no traffic from Google (Ahrefs, 2020)
  • 48% of consumers are using voice technology for general search queries (Search engine land, 2019)
  • About 43% of voice-enabled device owners use their device to shop  (Narvar, 2018)
  • 27% of the online population worldwide is using voice search on mobile (Google, 2018)
  • The first 5 organic results in the SERPs account for 67.6% of all clicks (Zero Limit Web, 2021)
  • Over 29% of keywords with over 10K+ monthly searches consist of 3+ words (Ahrefs, 2021)
  • The first 5 seconds of page load time have the highest impact on conversion rates (Portent, 2019)
advertising-divider

Advertising Statistics

Advertising generates revenue through increasing the visibility of your brand. Use these statistics to find what advertising tactics will work best for your business.

  • 44% of respondents say they use ad blockers because they don't want their online behavior to be tracked (Statista, 2020) 
  • 45% of people in the U.S. ages 15 to 25 say they use an adblocker  (Statista, 2020)
  • Ad Blocking costs advertisers billions of dollars and the losses are growing annually worldwide (Statista, 2019)
  • $3.33 is the average cost-per-click (CPC) in the marketing industry and the most expensive marketing industry keyword CPC is $165 (Ahrefs and WordStream, 2020) 
  • Mobile advertising is expected to slow down to about 10.4% by the end of 2022  (Statista, 2021) 
  • By 2022, Mobile advertising spending is expected to surpass $240 billion dollars (Statista, 2021) 
video-marketing-divider

Video Marketing Statistics

Using video for your digital marketing efforts is a unique and effective way to gain more traction for your business. Keep up to speed with these statistics and implement video into your team's marketing efforts.

  • Since 2016, the number of businesses using video in their marketing efforts has increased from 61% to 86% (Wyzowl, 2021)
  • About 78% of video marketers said they believed video to be a crucial part of their marketing strategy in 2015, and now in 2021 that number has increased to 93% (Wyzowl, 2021)
  • Marketers have reported great ROI that is consistently increasing from video. A third said they got a good ROI, in 2015. By 2021 that number increased to 87% (Wyzowl, 2021)
  • 94% of marketers feel they increased understanding of their product or service using video (Wyzowl, 2021) 
lead-generation-divider

Lead Generation Statistics

Lead generation is the process of reeling in and converting people that are interested in your brand. These lead generation statistics will share how important it is to nurture this step of the customer journey and how marketers are doing that.

  • On average 51% of companies are currently using Marketing automation. More than half of B2B companies (58%) plan to adopt the technology (EmailMonday, 2021)
  • Research and Markets anticipated the global marketing automation market size to reach USD 8.42 billion by 2027 (Research and Markets, 2020)
  • 90% of businesses are already using content marketing to generate inbound leads (Gist, 2019)
  • 73% of organizations focus on lead quality over lead quantity (Demand Generation Survey, 2018)
bonus-divider

Bonus Statistics

  • For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42 (DMA, 2019)
  • 45% of internet users reported that they avoided opening emails from unknown email addresses (Statista, 2019)
  • Over 306 billion emails are sent and received each day (Statista, 2021)
  • This figure is projected to increase to over 376 billion daily emails in 2025 (Statista, 2020)
  • In 2020, the number of global e-mail users amounted to four billion and is set to grow to 4.6 billion users in 2025 (Statista, 2020)
  • 45% of small businesses with effective or very effective email copy have average open rates of 26% or higher (AWeber, 2020)
  • 86% of small businesses send emails at least once per month (AWeber, 2020)
  • Less than 7% of small businesses have more than 50k email subscribers (AWeber, 2020)
  • Apple iPhone accounts for 37% of email opens (Litmus, 2021)
  • Apple Mail accounts for 9% of email opens (Litmus, 2021)
  • U.S adults spend an about 3 hours and 10 minutes per day on their smartphones (Emarketer, 2019)
  • 4 out of 5 marketers said they’d rather stop using social media than email marketing (Litmus, 2020)

Keep up with the Latest Trends

Staying up to speed with the ever-changing marketing trends is crucial to the success of your business. Although the industry is constantly evolving and developing new methods, it is worthwhile to spend time studying up. Being in the know with how trends are moving will help you better connect with your target audience and allow you to drive more conversions.

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Now, let's be honest—you’ve likely heard about all of these rotating for the last few years. While email marketing has come a long way and is changing faster than ever, there’s only so much you can do within 600x1,500 pixels. However, there are no limits to where your creativity can take you. 

Let’s get into it.  

#1. Unique, tailored experiences 

Damian Grabarczyk, the co-founder and growth marketer of PetLab Co., says, “We faced the challenge of connecting meaningfully with an audience that expects more than one-size-fits-all communication.” 

When we speak about crafting tailored emails we mean going beyond the recipient's first name in the subject line. We’re talking about optimizing your entire email strategy to design multi-stage touchpoints to nurture leads across the customer lifecycle. As well as, leveraging data to send hyper-personalized, relevant, and engaging emails that feel less like a broadcast message and more like a conversation. 

Many are using AI machine learning algorithms and AI automation to analyze customer interactions, past purchases, browsing habits, website visits, and even social media behavior to curate engaging email content that resonates deeply with the real-time needs of recipients.

For PetLab Co this looked like including content such as an individual’s pet health history or product usage timelines. Damian Grabarzyk expands, “This approach transformed the conversion rate and strengthened customer loyalty. As we look ahead, I see brands in 2025 moving beyond generic personalization to adopt strategies that make customers feel truly understood and valued.”

On the other hand, many are leaning into user-generated content (UGC) for crafting tailored experiences. Customers today are more likely to trust the opinions of peers over branded messages. UGC like customer reviews, testimonials, videos, and photos are the best form of social proof depicting real people using and benefitting from your products or services. 

We see the benefits of using both AI and UGC to get the most out of your email conversions ;). 

#2. AI tools as an addition, not a substitution

Experts at NordPass state, "AI-powered content generation tools are not here to replace email copywriters and marketers. These tools make us more efficient. The smarter the tool is, the better equipped we are to create high-performing email content that drives results." 

AI tools can support us by significantly enhancing the speed, precision, and effectiveness of your emails. For instance while traditionally A/B testing has required a lot of time to analyze small variations with AI you quickly implement and test multiple email elements and make adjustments based on real-time engagement data. There are AI algorithms that can even predict which variations are most likely to resonate with different audience segments, leading to more accurate targeting and faster optimization.

In short, AI tools are revolutionizing the way we craft and optimize our email’s deliverability. There are many different types of AI solutions so we suggest finding the right one for your needs. 

#3. Even more transparency around data

With AI continuing to rise, folks are more and more concerned about where their data is going. That’s where zero-party data collection becomes a key strategy in email marketing, allowing you to gather data directly from customers rather than relying on third-party sources. 

Zero-party data includes information that consumers willingly share, such as preferences, interests, and purchase intentions. This data is often collected through surveys, preference centers, quizzes, or interactive content and is highly valuable because it is shared explicitly, ensuring accuracy and deeper personalization without privacy concerns associated with third-party tracking.

As privacy regulations tighten, zero-party data will empower you to deliver hyper-personalized email experiences while respecting user privacy. This approach will help you build trust, as customers feel more in control of their data, and you gain insights that lead to more relevant and engaging email content.

#4. The death of static emails

With attention span getting shorter day after day, digest-format emails are expected to rise in popularity in 2025. Presenting email content in an easy-to-scan, organized, and minimalistic layout will surely help deliver the most relevant information in a fraction of the time. 

Additionally, interactive emails will allow recipients to directly engage within the email without having to visit a landing page or website. Interactive elements like product carousels, polls, and quizzes create a dynamic experience that keeps subscribers engaged, especially in visually driven industries like fashion brands

So what now? 

You’ve heard these strategies before, but now it’s time to actually put them into action. The brands that win at email marketing in 2025 won’t just be sending emails—they’ll be creating experiences. Whether it’s hyper-personalized content, AI-driven efficiency, zero-party data collection, or interactive emails that break the mold, the key is to stay ahead of the curve.

So, what’s the first strategy you’ll finally implement? Your inbox (and your audience) are waiting.

How to Leverage Email Campaigns to Gather Sincere Product Reviews

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What do customers think about your brand’s products? The best way to find out is to ask them directly, which you can do via strategic email campaigns.

Email makes gathering authentic product reviews quick and easy. By collecting sincere feedback, you can build trust, increase sales, boost loyalty, and innovate product improvements. 

That said, requesting reviews via email requires precise timing, personalized messaging, and lots of engagement optimizations. But don’t worry—we’ll walk you through some key steps to create email campaigns that deliver the valuable feedback you need.

Why product reviews matter

Product reviews do more than confirm that you're meeting customers’ needs. Sincere feedback drives loyalty and sales, offers valuable customer insights, and helps you develop a strategic product development roadmap.

  • Fosters customer loyalty: Requesting and listening to feedback makes your customers feel valued and heard. It demonstrates that you prioritize customer satisfaction, which helps you build stronger, long-term relationships. Review requests also act as re-engagement emails by starting new conversations with customers.
  • Increases sales: Social proof drives sales. According to a recent survey by Power Reviews, 90% of potential customers use online reviews to make purchasing decisions. In fact, reviews have more influence over purchasing decisions than product prices. Turning product reviews into customer testimonials and encouraging reviews on third-party sites can significantly boost sales.
Image sourced from powerreviews.com
  • Builds Customer 360 insights: Customer feedback delivers insights into customer needs and sentiments, enriching Customer 360. Exactly what is Customer 360? It’s a unified, 360-degree view of customer data. It empowers you to tailor products and customer experiences to meet individual needs and preferences. 
  • Drives product improvements: Sincere customer feedback reveals what target customers like/dislike about your products. It provides key insight into their value, functionality, and usability, unlocking large-scale development opportunities.

How to create an email campaign to collect product reviews

Want to unlock the power of product reviews? Let’s explore how to create email campaigns that encourage customers to share their feedback.

Segment your audience

Like promotional emails, product review requests shouldn’t be sent to every subscriber.

If subscribers haven’t had the chance to try your product, product review requests will feel irrelevant and may trigger unsubscriptions. So, only send review email requests to customers recently trying your product.

You can do this by segmenting your email list based on where customers are in the buying cycle. Target loyal customers, recent purchasers, and first-time buyers with tailored email campaigns. This ensures that you’re sending emails to customers most likely to respond with insightful feedback.

Write a compelling email subject line

According to Superoffice, 33% of people open an email based on the subject line. 

Image sourced from superoffice.com

To get the click-through rates you want, your email subject lines should be personalized, relevant, and engaging. Here are some examples:

  • Did you love [product]? Or hate it? Let us know!
  • We value your opinion — help us improve!
  • We want YOU to help us make our product better!
  • Up for a discount? Share your feedback for 10% off! 

Learn more > Tips for writing open worthy subject lines.

Optimize for customer engagement

A successful email marketing strategy relies on customer engagement. Here are some key email elements you need to encourage interactions.

  • An attractive email design: With the right layout, color scheme, typography, and images, you ensure easy readability and promote interaction. Use these engagement-boosting email design best practices to help you create a design that boosts conversion rates.
  • Gratitude and value: Thank customers for reading the email and explaining why their feedback is so important. Also, consider including a personalized Gmail email signature with your content details to build trust and encourage customers to engage with your review request. 
  • Personalized, relevant content: Personalized email content motivates engagement. Use customer data platform (CDP) data to tailor messages to individual customers. What is a CDP? It’s a centralized platform that collects and unifies customer information, building comprehensive customer profiles. 
  • Incentives: Offering a small discount can motivate customers to leave reviews, especially first-time buyers. That said, incentives can (sometimes) generate insincere reviews, so stress the importance of honesty. 
  • A strong call-to-action (CTA): Your CTA should direct readers straight to the reviews submission page. Use clear CTAs with bold buttons and typography to make it stand out.
  • Mobile responsiveness: If your emails are slow to load or don’t display correctly on mobile devices, your bounce rate will spike. Leverage solutions that offer advanced mobile optimization features — such as Beefree— to create responsive emails every single time.

Ask specific, concise questions

Complex, drawn-out questions that are too open-ended can disengage customers. So, get straight to the point with concise, direct questions. Here are some examples:

  • What did you think of [specific product feature]?
  • How often do you use our product?
  • What are your favorite/least favorite features?
  • How likely are you to recommend this product?
  • What could we do to improve our product?

Use a mixture of closed and open-ended questions to increase your chances of receiving meaningful responses.

Make it easy to respond

The easier it is for customers to leave a review, the more responses you’ll receive. So, make the process as seamless and convenient as possible. One way to do this is with survey emails.

Email surveys have high response rates. They can be completed within the email with minimal effort, which is a big plus for busy customers. And, they can generate a wealth of quantitative data and metrics that are quick to analyze, leading to faster improvements. BeeFree has an extensive collection of email survey templates to suit every need.

For longer review requests, include a CTA that directly links to the review submission page. Review forms should use simple, clear language, be optimized for mobile, and have a progress bar. 

You could even provide your telephone contact details to allow customers to leave a review via telephone. It’s the preferred communication method for 55% of Baby Boomers according to Hubspot, so it’s worth considering. 

Leverage small business telephone services from Vonage to access call center capabilities like virtual receptionists and CRM integrations, streamlining processes.

Also consider directing customers to leave reviews on popular review sites, such as Google and Amazon.

Optimize email timings

If you send product review requests too early, there’s a chance your customers won’t have tried your product yet. But if you send them too late, your customer might have forgotten their experience. 

So, when’s the best time to request reviews? 

Aim to send review requests within 7-14 days post-purchase. This gives customers a chance to try the product a few times, leading to more sincere, meaningful reviews. Plan for seasonal surges such as Black Friday and incorporate them into your schedules.

Key takeaways

Do email campaigns work for gathering valuable product reviews that drive improvements, boost trust, and increase sales and loyalty? 

Absolutely — but they need to be strategic.

To generate sincere reviews and valuable data, ensure your marketing emails are personalized, engaging, and optimized for convenience. And, use email list segmentation and marketing automation to ensure they’re sent to the right customers at the right time.

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