PRESS RELEASE
MarketingPlatform
Vejen, Denmark
July 2020
The Coronavirus pandemic created a boom for email marketing
A newly published Danish study has mapped the use of email marketing in the country, just after Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced the government was shutting the country down in mid-March of 2020.
The Danish company MarketingPlatform, which serves several of the largest Danish newsletter senders, has just published a study based on 2 billion email campaign send-outs. The study is the only one of its kind in the world with Danish figures.
MarketingPlatform has developed a marketing automation solution that can manage and execute corporate digital marketing campaigns on many channels, including email marketing.
It was like Black Friday just at a different time of year…
Hardly had Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen finished the announcement that she was shutting down the country before the hoarding of toilet paper and digital bandwidth began. Companies, organisations and public services across the country had to communicate to their customers and users that they had either closed, or that they were still operational, and/or that they were ready to deliver online orders.
“We have customers from all industries and sectors, some are severely hit by the crisis, and others have experienced huge growth. So we have to be mindful of what particular version of the world a client may be in when the phone rings, ”explains founder of MarketingPlatform, Kim Østergaard.
Thirty times as many newsletters as normal for the time of year were sent using the company’s Marketing Automation platform in the days after the country was shut down. With a range of content that included everything from handshake offers to community-critical information from local councils, regions and government departments.
3% of the messages in total were affected the huge increase in send-outs
There was a decrease of only 3% in the overall number of newsletters consumers opened, despite the sharply increased volume sent out just after the shutdown – a figure known in the profession as the “opening rate”.
After a few weeks, companies began to return to a more normal level of campaign send-outs. However, the overall figure was still significantly higher than before the Coronavirus crisis struck – as many as 2-3 times more campaigns are being sent out – but the opening rate is back to normal.
39% of Danish consumers open the newsletters they receive, and quite a few unsubscribe every single month. However, a number varies greatly depending on whether the message comes from a well-known brand of physical stores or restaurants. In fact, interestingly enough, Danes unsubscribe 7 times more frequently from newsletters from an online-only shop.
More information
The figures are based on a survey of more than 2 billion campaign send-outs to Danish recipients. The figures mentioned in percentage terms in this article all refer to May 2020. The figures are only for so-called B2C send-outs where a company sends to private persons and not for B2B communications.
Link to slides and a recorded webinar presenting the study (in Danish):
https://marketingplatform.com/da/webinars/temperaturen-paa-email-marketing-2020-i-danmark/