Report: E-mail Marketing Will Grow to $4.6 Billion Business by 2004

Spending on E-mail marketing, which amounted to $898 million last year, will increase 417 percent to reach the $4.6 billion level by 2004, according to the new eMail Marketing Report by eMarketer.

The report also predicts that email advertising’s share of total US online advertising spending will increase to 15 percent by 2003. Spending stood at 3 percent in 1999.

Emarketer’s report shows that 61 percent of medium-large size companies in the United States use email on a regular basis to market to prospects and/or customers.

“Already, leading marketers such as Macy‘s, Blockbuster Video, Charles Schwab & Co. and J.Crew have enthusiastically embraced email direct marketing,” says Geoffrey Ramsey, statsmaster at eMarketer.

The report predicted that the volume of opt-in email will jump 52.3 percent to 61.1 billion by the end of this year, reaching 240 billion messages by 2003. In 1999, an estimated 20 percent of all email received in the US was commercial, equally divided between spam and opt-in email.

The reasons for growth include the low cost of email marketing as compared to traditional direct mail. In addition, the sheer numbers of email boxes are booming. The report said there were 78 million active email users older than 13, accounting for 35 percent of the total US population. By the end of 2002, that number will rise to 135 million email users, 59 percent of the US population.

Emarketer compiles its reports by gathering research from a variety of sources, then filtering, analyzing, and organizing them.