Is Email Marketing’s ROI Sky-High or Irrelevant?

For the better part of the past two decades, email marketing’s return on investment has hovered around 40:1, according to a variety of sources. For instance, a recent Litmus survey of more than 2,000 marketers found that email marketing’s ROI is 36:1. That means the average brand can expect to earn $36 for every $1 they spend on their email marketing efforts.

Compared with other channels, email marketing’s ROI is typically near the top of the spectrum, up there with brands’ investments in their website and organic SEO. Email marketing outperforms SMS and push marketing, as well as search, social, and other digital advertising. And it blows away the returns seen with traditional media channels like direct mail, TV, and radio.

This ROI hierarchy has been in place for a long time. Given that, you might expect for brands to be perpetually eager to invest more in their email marketing programs, especially as they gain more AI capabilities. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Instead, brands are deprioritizing marketing and shifting budget from higher-ROI owned channels to lower-ROI paid channels, according to Gartner’s 2024 CMO Spend Survey. That seems like a poor strategy, both short-term and long-term, so why are brands doing this?

Let’s explore possible reasons why brands aren’t more drawn to email marketing’s high ROI.

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