National client email report 2012

Executive summary

• The strategic value of email marketing increased in 2011, with over 90% of respondents rating it as strategically important or very important to their business.

• Email marketing accounted for 10% or less of the marketing budget in almost half of businesses surveyed, but still claimed a slightly greater proportion of budgets than in 2010. 63% expect to increase expenditure on email marketing in the future.

• Email marketing is rated as by far the best marketing tactic for both ROI and for developing enduring and profitable customer relationships.

• This positive outlook pervades every aspect of the study and report. For example, marketers expressed far fewer email marketing concerns than in previous years.

• The share of revenue generated by email marketing exceeds its share of budget, even ignoring the considerable indirect and long-term responses to campaigns.

• Newsletters (generic and segmented by purchase habits) together with limited-time offers contribute the most to email revenue, but there remains considerable potential to use those message types that generate high revenue per email, particularly trigger email campaigns.

• Open, click and conversion rates trended up over the past 12 months and are widely predicted to increase further in the future. Only 1 in 6 marketers reported decreases in these metrics.

• The most effective methods for email address acquisition are “during transactions”, “organic website traffic” and “social media”.

• Indeed, compared to previous years, email marketers are far more positive about social media/networks as a complementary channel to email, particular its role in building relationships.

• Maximum mailing frequencies have dropped compared with 2010, and there is a suggestion that many marketers may not be emailing enough to truly maximise email response.

• Internal resources are the biggest barrier to success: most businesses have less than one staff hour a day allocated to email marketing. Skills are not necessarily a major constraint, with 70% of marketers at least familiar with the essentials of the marketing discipline.

• Unsurprisingly, given the above results, most marketers (62%) describe themselves as satisfied or very satisfied with their email marketing programme.

national_client_email_report_2012.pdf