In 2022, the world of marketing continues to evolve.
Not only did we get the ability to shop directly on our favorite social media apps, but we also got to hear a lot of futuristic talk about AR/VR, the Metaverse, and Web3 development.
As we enter another unique year, marketers may wonder if and how other companies in their industry are handling everything.
To help marketers like you see how other brands are performing, HubSpot Data from 150,000+ companies analyzed, In this post, we’ll take a look at three of the key marketing themes we discovered and how they can affect you today.
Want a complete look at how big business performed and what you can do to keep your company? Read our full year business data recap on the Hustle blog now.
About this data: These insights are based on data collected from 130,000+ HubSpot customers globally between July 2021 and September 2022. Because the data is aggregated from HubSpot customers’ businesses, please be aware that the performance of individual businesses, including HubSpot’s, may vary based on their own market, customer base, industry, geography, stage and/or other factors.
3 Marketing Data Themes We See in 2022
2022 Web Traffic Struggling To Outrun 2021
In 2021, much of the world was still reopening after the worst of the pandemic. And, although people were starting to leave the house and disconnect from their screens more often, others were still highly connected, working mostly remotely, and doing everything from shopping to entertaining themselves from home were doing everything.
In 2022, the global events we’ve gone through seem farther and farther away in the past, with more people than ever trying to get out of the house, turning off their computers, and making Zoom calls and texts the real thing. , continue to do business personally relations.
In 2021 we also saw that people have become more honest with themselves regarding work. Instead of spending 10 hours a day in the office or working from home, they opted to take more time off, set work-life balance boundaries, or participate in quiet leave.
Finally, we saw in our quarterly analyses, and note in the section below, that marketers who sent fewer emails also received lower email open rates throughout the year. For some sites, email can be the largest traffic source after search engines and direct traffic. And, when any channel sees these effects, it can greatly impact year-over-year performance.
Considering the above factors, it isn’t too surprising that web traffic across all industries took a hit of a 6.7% drop in 2022 compared to 2021.
The only industry that did not see a decline was, surprisingly, leisure and hospitality. The industry, which saw major business impact during the COVID travel and nationwide shutdown, is now showing signs of getting back up with an annual traffic growth of 6.35%.
The industries that saw the biggest declines were trade, transportation and utilities, as well as business and professional services, both of which see traffic tip over 7% in 2022.
Marketing email had trouble getting subscribers
As we indicated above, email open rates took a tip in 2022. Across industries, email open rates dropped by a whopping 12.89%, while email open rates dropped by only 4%.
|
metric |
YoY (2022 vs 2021) |
sample size |
|
sends email |
11.01% |
167,457 |
|
email opens |
-3.32% |
167,457 |
|
email open rate |
-12.89% |
167,457 |
While there could be many possibilities for this, some effects that seem likely are:
- Businesses send too many emails. In 2022, companies will send 11% more marketing emails than usual, which could easily burn out customers, cause attrition, or even hurt email subscription size. On top of this, sales reps will also be sending emails more frequently. Sales email open rates dropped by 11.6%Indicating that the inboxes of those who were subscribers and potential customers could certainly be bloated.
- Email oversaturation from all kinds of brands (which potentially also increases email sending) This could lead to higher competition in customer inboxes than in previous years. On top of marketing email to compete,
- Growing customer list. While this shows that people are investing in your brand and content, it can be difficult to maintain rates. Because open rates decreased by a much higher percentage than opens, this could mean that marketers added more contacts to their subscription lists, but received opens from only the same or slightly fewer people.
- Inbox continues to improve organization, junk and spam filters. While this is better for the consumer, these pivots can take the email out of sight, although this is less likely if you have low spam rates for your email campaign.
- Competition from other mobile platforms: With the growth of social media and other mobile content-driven apps, email can feel less relevant to some consumers despite still being a solid marketing strategy.
If you take advantage of email marketing, keep track of your customers and your competition, as well as how email consumption and content is changing to make sure you’re prioritizing messages with the highest potential impact. This will ensure that your content gets a chance to be seen by your subscribers in a busy list of unread messages.
Ultimately, your customers, prospects and leads can reward you for understanding their needs with both engagement and purchases.
Still, Marketing Efforts Generated Leads and Conversion Impact
Even though marketers aren’t closing deals like sales reps, they still get into business influencers despite lower traffic and email open engagement.
Leads and conversions, marketing departments’ biggest concern often with a business’s bottom line, actually grew year over year.
While web conversions saw an increase of around 11%, inbound leads increased by 6.66%
While web conversions will likely increase due to the lower proportion of web visits (mentioned above), the increasing number of inbound leads shows that companies are still growing their prospect lists.
Unsurprisingly, leisure and hospitality saw the largest growth of 18.3% YoY, with the second largest increase in website conversions at just over 12%.
Although they saw traffic coming off in 2022, other notable lead-growth industries were:
- Education and Health Services: 10.6% lead growth and 11% increase in conversion rate.
- Professional and Professional Service: 7.7% lead growth and 13.7% increase in conversion rate.
All of these industries being top performers make sense because the businesses within them often sell expensive or high-commitment offerings (be they B2B or B2C). A random consumer won’t pay for something like this after only reading a landing page, so marketing teams in these areas are likely to be skilled at building strong lead-nurturing strategies.
One industry that seemed to be struggling in 2022 was the construction industry, which saw declines in all metrics including inbound leads (-3.8%), web conversions (-0.65%), and web traffic (-6.84%). , While we’re not entirely sure why this is, here are our two best guesses (which will likely be tentative):
- Due to inflation, rising cost of materials, and construction team talentConstruction projects that consumers and businesses would have invested in within the last decade have become more expensive or unaffordable.
- During 2020, building and/or owners took advantage of their time at home or lack of people in public/office buildings and used that time to invest in construction, reconstruction or maintenance. But starting in 2021 And continuing into 2022, construction has seen a lower pace. Ultimately, as the cost of living rises and people return to work, these projects may not find the same amount of interest or engagement online.
What’s Ahead for Marketers in 2023
While we cannot predict the future, we expect lead generation and conversion plays to be more important than ever for marketers as they still aim to profit the bottom line of their businesses in unprecedented times. But, because internet people are still as hyperconnected as ever, anything can happen with traffic or email marketing.
Ultimately, what you do with your brand’s marketing plan is up to you. And, those decisions should be made with data from your company, your goals, and your own competitive analyses.
If you’re a marketing leader, entrepreneur, or just really interested in how businesses compare overall in 2022, check out This Detailed Business Recap o All the 2022 Metrics We Digging Up, Or, get more tips on planning the most innovative marketing strategy from our State of the Marketing report below.
