Statistics in the Industry

A variety of recently published studies and surveys from major industry research sources make up the foundation of this review. The data was factored in from answers directed to grocery business owners and managers. Just forty-seven grocery businesses report current engagement in email marketing campaigns; twenty-two percent report plans to launch their own email marketing campaigns in the future; thirty-one percent report no plans to engage in email marketing presently or in the future. Smaller grocery businesses are less likely to participate in email marketing, while larger grocery retailers, providers and distributors state email marketing is fundamental to their corporate promotional activities. Industry engagement charts may be difficult to qualify, as some larger providers and distributors may utilize email subscription lists containing many thousands, even millions of email addresses quantified as a single user. Because of the polar types of businesses within the grocery sector, it is difficult to precisely evaluate current cross-industry email marketing. However, the industry's new media marketing is on average with that of other industries. The send frequency for grocery businesses is one of the highest reported in any industry, with 71 percent issuing email missives more often than monthly. Less than 25 percent of all grocery businesses send out monthly email newsletters, while three percent send every two months, one percent send quarterly and one percent send on a seasonal or annual basis. The content type utilized by grocery businesses skews toward sales-oriented material: 21 percent of all content is informational only; 41 percent mixes information and sales; and 38 percent is exclusively sales. Subscriber sources for grocery businesses tend to be composed of current customers. A total of 56 percent of the subscriber list is composed of current clients; 14 percent, promotional result subscribers; 21 percent, Web-derived subscribers; three percent, purchased and supplied leads; and six percent of subscribers are gathered through public promotional events. Grocery business' list sizes are evenly distributed across the spectrum. Seventeen percent of all businesses report less than 500 email addresses on their list; 32 percent claim 500 to 1,000; 32 percent claim 1,000 to 3,000; seven percent report between 3,000 and 5,000 subscribers; and 12 percent state more than 5,000. The email segmentation rate among grocery businesses is low when compared to other sectors. Seventy-eight percent of grocery business owners and managers state zero list segmentation, while just 22 percent segment their lists.