More than anyone else in your team, you know email marketing is a key part of your marketing.   But you’re stymied by the lack of resourcing or budget.  Do you need help to show your business why to allocate more to your email marketing efforts?

Just in time, this new report from the DMA in the UK, a market similar to New Zealand in many ways,  proves the importance of email marketing and highlights some compelling motivators.  Add these to your budget report now!

THE BEST ROI

67% of respondents cite email as the tactic that gives the BEST ROI when compared to all other standard marketing activities, and almost double the ROI of the next best option which is online marketing.  Email clearly has a valued role in marketing, but does your boss know how it compares with other marketing tactics?

BUT… NOT ENOUGH BUDGET

The reported revenue contributions from email marketing are disproportionately large when compared to its budget allocation. Email drives 30% or more organisational revenue for 44% of email marketers, but it isn’t accounting for an equivalent amount of budget.

SO… WILL BE SPENDING MORE

In budget plans for 2012, 63% of email marketers are intending to increase expenditure on email, and only 6% are expecting a decrease. This alone speaks volumes and reflects the changing perceptions around the importance of email marketing. It has migrated from a simple low cost workhorse to a feature rich and flexible marketing tool, not to mention it supports a range of tactics and goals, and reaches and connects a number of channels and platforms.

BECAUSE…  CLICKS AND OPENS UP

Response rates to good email marketing campaigns are improving.  Opens and click rates are steadily rising – 67% of respondents said that open rates held steady or improved, with click rates higher again at 69% improvement, and conversion rates at 63%.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS = ENGAGED

In terms of relationship building, again email is the clear winner, voted by 72% of marketers as being the best marketing tool by far for developing closer and more enduring customer relationships.

RESOURCING

One of the key things the report highlighted was that the biggest barrier to email marketing success is the struggle around put time and resources toward their email marketing efforts. Many businesses have less than one staff hour a day allocated toward email marketing! So increasingly the value of agencies such as Jericho who have the expertise and resource to handle campaigns comes into play.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EMAIL

Overall, this DMA report really highlights the changing attitudes toward email, how it has gone from being the hot new kid on the block, to being the workhorse in the background, and how it’s come a full circle to being strategically important part of business and marketing as a whole.

You can’t put email in a corner.

You can download the full report here