Gartner-数字智商：电子邮件基准（英）-2021.10-19页_1mb

Gartner® Digital IQ: Email Benchmarks 2021 Summary

Core Content

Gartner's Digital IQ: Email Benchmarks 2021 provides a comprehensive analysis of email marketing performance across six industries: Consumer Goods, Financial Services, Healthcare, Manufacturing and Natural Resources, Retail, and Travel and Hospitality. The study evaluates over 1,198 brands, measuring their performance in terms of open rates, total opens, site traffic from email, and mobile optimization. The goal is to help digital marketing leaders understand the strategies of top-performing brands and improve their own email marketing efforts.

Main Points and Key Findings

Email Marketing Challenges

• Email is rated as one of the least effective channels for driving conversion to sales, with only 47% of marketers finding it effective.
• Marketers have shifted toward quantity over quality, sending generic product-based emails, which have not yielded the same engagement levels as more targeted campaigns.
• The pandemic has disrupted customer behavior and data collection, leading to a decline in the use of triggered emails and personalization.

Top-Performing Industries

1. Retail is the top-performing industry overall, with 80% of its brands in the top half of the index.
2. Financial Services leads in open rates, averaging 27.1%, and has the most customized messaging.
3. Travel and Hospitality achieved second-highest total opens and the highest mobile optimization rate.
4. Manufacturing and Natural Resources brands improved their performance by adopting B2C tactics.
5. Consumer Goods has the lowest open rates and site traffic from email.
6. Healthcare ranked the lowest, but some top-tier brands still outperformed others due to high open rates.

Strategies for Success

• Personalization and segmentation are key to high engagement and conversion.
• Longer subject lines with targeted information perform as well as shorter ones, especially when aligned with sophisticated targeting.
• Mobile optimization is critical, with 94% of consumer goods brands optimizing their emails for mobile.
• Data collection and activation are vital for improving email performance, particularly for industries with limited data inputs.

Recommendations

• Benchmark against cross-industry leaders to gain insights into best practices.
• Improve customer data pipelines to enable more precise segmentation and personalization.
• Balance subject line length based on campaign goals:
  • Use short, concise subject lines for broad reach campaigns.
  • Use longer, detailed subject lines for targeted engagement.
• Leverage implicit data and event-triggered emails to enhance relevance and drive conversions.
• Integrate email with other channels to create a cohesive multichannel strategy.

Case Studies

Bank of America (Financial Services)

• Uses its app to collect granular customer data.
• Sends personalized product recommendations based on user behavior.
• Achieved an average open rate of 34% and strong digital sales growth.

Saks Fifth Avenue (Travel and Hospitality)

• Demonstrates subject line optimization by using both short and long titles depending on the campaign.
• A generic discount email with a short subject line had a 19.2% open rate and 69.6% of list coverage.
• A hyper-relevant retargeting email with a detailed subject line had a 50% open rate and a 0.31% list coverage.

Industry Key Performance Indicators

Brand Rankings

Methodology

• 1,198 brands across six industries were evaluated.
• Metrics include:
  • Opens: Total email opens and average open rate.
  • Site Traffic: Monthly visits to the brand site from email and change in visits.
  • Mobile Readiness: Percentage of mobile-ready emails.
• Scoring is weighted by industry, reflecting different priorities and opportunities.

Conclusion

Gartner emphasizes that email marketing is still a critical channel, but its effectiveness depends heavily on personalization, segmentation, and data activation. Brands that successfully leverage customer data and targeted messaging see significantly higher engagement and conversion. Marketers must balance reach and engagement by using subject line length and content personalization strategically. Cross-industry learning is essential to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.