Email Gets Results, So Why the Underinvestment?

According to the latest ‘Email Marketing Industry Census’ from Econsultancy, email is in rude health. The majority of client-side marketers (73%) say the channels leads compared to all others in terms of results – even ahead of SEO (72%) and paid search (67%).

According to the Email Benchmarking Report 2019, email is showing improved delivery rates, rising open rates, and increasing click-through-rates. As such, the data proves that people are more engaged with email marketing than ever before.

In addition, innovation is high on the agenda for email marketers looking to improve further on these already stellar results. The top three areas brands are planning to add to their email arsenal are ‘Advanced segmentation’ (47%), ‘Content personalisation’ (37%) and ‘Behavioural targeting’ (39%).

It’s interesting to see so many marketers pushing for automation capabilities. Undoubtedly these technologies can help, but in the ‘Marketer Email Tracker 2019’ earlier this year we saw that around a quarter of campaigns are still being sent with no segmentation or automation. So, while automation clearly offers an opportunity, there’s a lot that organisations can improve upon when working with existing technologies to better target customers with more engaging and targeted content.

Despite email remaining the highest-ranked channel in terms of return on investment – something the latest ‘Marketer Email Tracker 2019’ reports at a rate of £42:1 within the last year – email doesn’t appear to be securing the budget is clearly warrants. The report cites many key factors holding the channel back, but two in particular are unsophisticated monitoring and large misconceptions about the channel.

So why this seeming under-investment in such a successful channel? Are businesses simply overlooking email in favour of ‘new’ opportunities and channels for engaging customers?

As Jenna Tiffany, Founder and Strategy Director, Let’sTalk Strategy puts it: “Each year, email’s budget is the smallest when compared to other digital channels, yet [it] consistently achieves the highest ROI. Email marketing’s ROI is £10 higher after GDPR came into force. Email continues to generate results, and that’s with an increasingly smaller proportion of the overall marketing budget, as highlighted in the results of this research. Imagine the results if more budget was allocated to email!”

Whatever the reasons, the ‘Email Marketing Industry Census’ may help resolve the budgetary challenge with these top five tips:

1. Build the business case for further investment by using more sophisticated measurement
2. Prioritise device-agnostic email campaigns
3. Personalisation is key to creating deeply engaging experiences
4. Harness the power of marketing automation
5. Look into the potential of predictive solutions and AI

Next time you receive a marketing email, take notice of how it works and see what you can learn from it. It’s the most engaging channel for a reason.

Stay tuned for more email-related content – it’s a powerful channel and we’re excited to see what’s next in the email journey.