Most everyone on the planet is aware of the Google juggernaut, a gargantuan company that has dominated the online sphere for years. However, how many people know that the market capitalization (or total value of the company) of Google is actually less than the amount of money earned through email marketing? If that seems too incredible to believe, consider that you can add the market cap of Google to those of Microsoft, IBM, Xerox and Hewlett-Packard and still not add up to the mountain of money that email marketing has generated for its users. Indeed, based on Direct Marketing Association (DMA) statistics and linearly extrapolated back to 1995, email marketing so far in its short fifteen year life has made more money than the market cap of Apple Computer… twice over!

A Prodigious $671 Billion!

Mark Twain’s famous quote about “lies, damned lies, and statistics” does not apply in this case. The total value of email marketing from the time when the total number of marketing emails sent annually first exceeded the number of direct mail pieces sent through the post just fifteen years ago is a staggering $671 billion dollars. That represents enough money to:

  • Bail out General Motors 13.4 times
  • Equal 242 times the total worldwide box office take for Avatar
  • Purchase all the beef produced in the world for the next two and a half years
  • Pump all the petroleum exported by Saudi Arabia for more than two years
  • Buy all the Intel microprocessors produced in the next 16 years
  • Add up to the entire gross income of Wal-Mart for one year and eight months
  • Account for all the bilateral import and export trade across the U.S. / Canada border for more than a year
  • Run the entire U.S. Department Of Education for almost eight and a half years
  • Operate NASA for nearly 37 years

42% of Email Marketers Don’t Know Their ROI

Given this completely unfathomable volume of cubic cash flowing into the coffers of email marketing there is still a worrisome lack of comprehension among many email marketers of the massive Return on Investment (ROI) generated by campaigns. According to the Econsultancy & Adestra Email Census, fully 42% percent of email marketers do not know their email marketing ROI. This is particularly surprising given the universally acknowledged efficiency of email marketing:

  • Datran Media’s Marketing & Media Survey established that the majority of marketers expect the ROI from their email campaigns to be higher than any other channel.
  • The DMA found in their Integrated Marketing Media Mix study that email marketing generates 21.6% of total revenues from all company campaigns tallied together. The Association also stated that email marketing is the most effective online marketing method for retention, scoring well above search engine positioning, banner ads, sponsorships and other programs.
  • Epsilon Research found that the majority of customers stated they had a more favorable opinion of the companies that send them email, while Cross View Research found that only 9% of customers prefer to receive promotional messages on social media sites or via SMS.
  • Econsultancy’s How We Shop in 2010: Habits and Motivations of Consumers survey stated that 68% of US consumers aged 18 to 26 use emailed coupons online.
  • ExactTarget’s Subscribers, Fans, and Followers: The Social Profile study proved that internet users engage with an average of 11.8 brands via email, compared to 9.4 brands via Facebook and 7.9 brands via Twitter. The same study established that 56% of US internet users interact with brands only via marketing emails, compared to 1.3% who interact only via Twitter and 0.7% only by Facebook.

The profusion of statistics proving email marketing is the most unbeatable promotional channel on the planet is equivalent only to the shiploads of money that is generated by its practitioners!