The consumer experience for a brand’s email marketing campaign begins at the moment the user opts in. So deciding what to offer the consumer (or not offer) for subscribing is one of the most important email marketing decisions a brand makes. To help provide guidance on when it is most effective to offer an incentive, as well as what types of incentives work best, DMi analyzed our 2018 email acquisition campaign data from over 14 million subscriber opt-ins across 74 consumer brand campaigns.

DMi used a very simple rule for the analysis: did the brand offer clear and exclusive value for consumers to subscribe to their email program? If so, it may have been in the form of a percent or dollars off your first purchase; or a free product offer or entry into a contest or sweepstakes.

The analysis proved very insightful, with distinct trends emerging from each consumer industry we analyzed. Across the entire consumer industry landscape, 46% of DMi brands utilized an incentive in 2018. Here is how the industries ranked in terms of the percent of brands that used an incentive:

• Ecommerce: 66.7%
• Retail: 60%
• Home Appliances: 50%
• CPG: 38.5%
• Media: 28.6%
• Travel: 25%
• Financial: 20%
• Political/Non-Profit: 0%

In general, the closer the brands email messages were to the point of sale, the more likely they were to offer an incentive. For instance, Ecommerce and Retail brands being the clear leaders in offering an incentive to drive an immediate purchase from new subscribers. Whereas Political and Financial brands highlighted access to information and content with far greater frequency.

The analysis also allowed us to do a deeper dive into the types of incentives that were used. Of the brands that did offer an incentive, these were the leading types of incentives offered in terms of the percent of brands that utilized each method:

• Percent off First Purchase (POFP) = 30.6%
• Free Product: 27.8%
• Dollar Value off First Purchase = 16.7%
• Sweepstakes Entry = 8.3%

Interestingly, while leveraging a POFP was the most commonly used incentive, Free Product offers were much more effective in generating opt-ins. The average campaign that offered Free Product incentive generated 275% more opt-ins than the average campaign that offered a POFP.

The biggest takeaway from our analysis was that overall incentive usage by consumer brands appears to have risen sharply from 2017-2018 (take a look at last year’s guide for reference). We will have to wait and see if that trend continues in 2019. But if overall email usage projections continue to increase every year, then brands will certainly continue getting competitive to get to the inbox – so we wouldn’t bet against it.