Marketers ‘rely heavily on email marketing, but prioritise speed over relevance’
New research suggests that more than one in six Australian marketers surveyed have no means in place to measure the success of their email campaigns and the quality of email marketing.
Despite this the study also found that 95 per cent believe their marketing campaigns generate average to good return on investment and there is a growing dependency on email marketing for lead generation and customer retention.
Around 31 per cent of marketers surveyed said they sent five or more email communications per month and 67 per cent said they planned to increase campaign frequency this year.
However, often marketers are sending out email marketing campaigns that prioritise speed and convenience over relevance and targeted content.
Even though 60 per cent of organisations rate segmentation and targeting as having a high to very high impact on the success of email marketing, more than a quarter of organisations don’t use segmentation at all (26 per cent).
The perception remained that email marketing is low-cost and therefore marketers can afford to send poorly conceived campaigns because any return is a good result, however small.
But 17 per cent, or one in six marketers, have no means in place to measure the success of their email marketing campaigns and therefore have no idea whether their campaigns are achieving positive business outcomes or whether they are damaging their brand by sending out irrelevant content.
The report, commissioned by Experian CheetahMail, a provider of permission-based email marketing services, said that if marketers failed to combat the rising email fatigue, they risked permanently damaging the medium as an effective communication tool.
The research – carried out by Pure Profile – encompassed a relatively small sample size of just over 300 B2B and B2C marketers.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
Linkedin
Uh… Tim…., last sentence mate, ‘b2b and b2b marketers’? ‘do you mean b2b and b2c – or some combination of that?
User ID not verified.
Hi Ro,
Yes, that was typo which has now been amended. 🙂
Cheers,
Camille – Mumbrella
Can we get a link to this report? Can’t see it on Cheetahmail or Forresters’ sites. Thanks!
User ID not verified.
Good promotion for email marketing as a medium.
In terms of reporting – all the email broadcasts do on behalf of advertisers come with very detailed activity reporting tracking; opens, clicks, and even pass alongs (viral). We do rely on clients to continue the post click tracking as they do for most web based campaigns, so the more sophisticated clients diffently do track to acquisition.
We know this as they keep coming back for more targeted media 🙂
Basic tracking and post clicl tracking is available to all clients using a ESP (Email Service Provider – broadcast system) such as the one mentioned in the article so please ask your ESP or your 3di account manager
User ID not verified.
Can you post the link to this report?
User ID not verified.
This should not be surprising for anyone who works in the analytics field. Although many companies now have analytics (Omniture, Google Analytics, WebTrends) and the ability to track the post click in place, most commit one or all three fatal errors:
1) They fail to implement the system correctly and are not able to track KPIs unique to their business.
2) They fail to provide training to staff on how to tag and track campaigns.
3) They fail to hire a BA to turn the data into actionable goal..
There’s a great opportunity for agencies to help out but more don’t have the skills to do so.
User ID not verified.
Hi Al & Brad,
We’ve requested an online version of the report to link to. The answer is yes, but they’re not able to move terribly fast. Perhaps tomorrow…
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Similar scenario to discussions about social media campaigns – though with less justification. SM as a marketing tool has only been around a couple of years; email marketing has been the net’s ‘killer app’ for over a decade.
Targeting, relevance, a compelling offer & segmentation are the essence of an effective email marketing campaign. If speed enters the equation, often one or more of these are sacrificed.
1-to-1 marketing is the golden fleece of any effective digital campaign, email marketing in particular. Unfortunately, the initial data collection is often flawed, superficial or variable and that leads to campaigns that achieve sub-optimal results. From an order of importance viewpoint, it’s classic DM: list is #1, offer #2, creative #3.
Another one of email marketing’s greatest issues is that it’s so damn easy to send out a stack of any old email to a database. And clearly that’s happening a lot.
Email marketing done well remains an incredibly powerful tool for marketers. It’s the doing it well that’s the challenge.
User ID not verified.
Hi Brad,
A link to the report is now live within the article.
Cheers,
Camille – Mumbrella