The email reality check: Lessons from 250+ marketers
Marketers trust email as a channel, but most haven't proven their own program needs it. That gap shows up in how teams track churn, how they measure results, and who ends up making the decisions.
To dig deeper, we ran the same nine questions two ways. First came an online survey of 200 lifecycle marketers ahead of Drive by Exit Five in Stowe, Vermont. Then about 50 marketers placed physical stickers on a spectrum for each question in a live workshop at Drive, followed by a fireside chat with Luke Reynebeau, VP of Product Marketing at Bitly, and small-group roundtables on what's working in email and AI right now.
The report covers what both groups said, including how many teams act on churn signals (26%), how many run fully automated campaigns (3%), and how marketers feel about AI in their email programs (84% are cautiously optimistic or excited). Each of the nine signals comes with our take and a test you can run this week, and a scorecard at the end pairs every pattern with its cause and a fix.
What's inside:
- Nine signals from the survey and the live room, each with a test you can run this week
- Data on churn tracking, automation, and email's revenue impact, including the 58% who name email as their best-ROI channel and the 17% who expect a serious hit if it stopped
- A customer spotlight on how Bitly's best performing email pulled 2.5x its typical reply rate
- A scorecard that pairs each pattern with its cause and a fix
