Half of marketers require over two weeks to produce a single email, yet 67% of consumers report receiving too many emails

Litmus, a leader in email marketing, released its The State of Email in Lifecycle Marketing, 2024 Edition, revealing how marketers use email across the customer journey, and its consumer survey data, analyzing consumer sentiment on key email marketing trends like personalization, data privacy, location-based data and emails, email type and quantity, and more. With these two data sets, Litmus generated dual perspectives — marketer and consumer — on relevant, timely topics, such as generational divides in email preferences, short-term revenue gains versus long-term growth, the urgency and opportunity in automation and the personalization trade-off.

While marketers report struggling with basic personalization due to resource constraints, technical expertise and data challenges, there’s a generational opportunity being missed: 57% of Gen Z and 55% of millennials consider personalization “extremely” or “very important,” compared to just 25% of baby boomers. Even more telling, 51% of Gen Z is comfortable sharing their data for personalization, while only 20% of boomers feel the same. Yet marketers still focus on basic personalization through ESPs, missing the chance to capture this personalization-friendly younger audience.

Timing is an essential element of every email marketing campaign, yet the majority of marketers (51%) need more than two weeks to produce a single email. This finding further highlights the capability gap between what young consumers want and what marketing teams can deliver.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Krish Mantripragada, Chief Product Officer @ Seismic

Additionally, a fundamental misalignment exists between stated goals and actual priorities in marketing departments. While customer retention appears as the second most common marketing goal in The State of Email in Lifecycle Marketing, it fails to make the top five when marketers rate goals by importance. This short-term focus is reinforced by consumer behavior: 78% of respondents rank promotional offers and discounts as a top-three engaging email type, with Gen Z particularly responsive (66% ranking it first).

A dangerous cycle unfolds: Marketers chase immediate revenue through promotions because they work, but this potentially undermines long-term customer value and brand relationships. Engagement metrics are recognized as vital indicators of brand health, yet teams struggle to balance these “softer” metrics against immediate revenue pressures. This dynamic reveals a systemic problem in how marketing success is measured and prioritized.

“At Litmus, we’re helping brands and marketers recognize what the consumer wants: personalized, relevant, engaging emails,” said Cynthia Price, SVP of Marketing at Litmus. “By helping marketers align immediate priorities with healthy long-term growth tactics, email can continue to be the lifeblood of the customer experience while also maintaining consumers’ respect as the go-to channel for branded communication. This is especially critical as goals and priorities within marketing departments continue to move further apart, and email recipients feel the brunt of this confusion with channel overuse, misaligned campaigns, irrelevant touchpoints, and, simply put, boring emails.”

Marketing Technology News: Why Responsible AI Principles Matter for Advertisers

Other key data points from The State of Email in Lifecycle Marketing and the consumer survey include:

• Less than half of marketers use customer retention, lifecycle and onboarding emails, with most marketers focusing on promotional content instead. However, 55% of marketers use email to make sales.
• Newsletters are the second most-used email type, yet are only used by half of marketers.
• The top two marketing priorities have remained the same in recent years — automation and personalization. However, automation takes the top spot this year, with more than a third of marketers wanting to create more triggered emails.
• Consumers receive emails from the same company daily, with 67% saying they receive too many. 81% of baby boomers say they receive too many, while less than 50% of Gen Z agree.
• While only 17% of consumers would share location-based data, nearly 50% are willing to share their name, basic contact information, and purchase history.
• 64% put exclusive offers based on loyalty status in their top three most valuable email elements, and 63% value product recommendations based on past purchases.