Marketing Sherpa recently released the 2013 Marketing Benchmark report. It’s the latest and most comprehensive collection of email marketing research stats and insights in market.  We bought it and whilst we can’t reproduce it for you due to copyright reasons, we are happy to share some of the findings.  You can also get an excerpt of it here.

As Marketing Sherpa says, “email is a venerable tactic that is often dismissed as being too rudimentary for today’s focus on real-time information. Yet, email continues to endure, and even thrive, under such scrutiny, continually proving its worth through better delivery practices, more advanced design, and strategic integration with other channels”

A few of the key insights from the report are:

60% of organisations using email reported that email marketing is producing a positive return on their investment (ROI)

83% report they are involved with tracking, reporting and analysing their email metrics – yay – no ‘set and forgets’ around here! And the metrics that organisations track the most? Clickthrough rate and open rate are the most popular by far, both sitting at around 90% – the next most measured metric is unsubscribe rate at 75%.

It appears that content is still king – the most effective tactic of all is content and in particular for B2B marketers, whitepapers and other premium content was considered the most effective of all. As we have said before, it is still not worth sending an email unless there is content worth reading, sharing or discussing. And this is shown as a key goal as 67% report that the top goal for the next 12 months is to deliver highly relevant content.

And for the biggest question of all – which is the best day to send? Well the results are in! Tuesday (At 26%) and Wednesday (At 23%) were, by far, considered the most effective days to send overall.  We find that this depends on the business you are in to some degree – read our earlier analysis here.  Further, retail email with a mobile friendly design is showing good results when sent on a Saturday or Sunday.  We see that while the open rates may be slightly lower, the click through and action rates can be very strong indeed.

Despite the rise of ‘mobile’, 58% of people are still not designing emails to render differently on mobile, let alone mobile specific versions of their emails.  However that same 58% recognises the pervasiveness of smartphones and tablets and they expect that mobile will dramatically affect or change their email marketing program in the next 12 months.   And with the continuing rise of the use of mobile as our primary device, it is not surprising to hear most say that they realise all their email designs and strategies need to be revamped for mobile compatibility.

But mobile isn’t everything – Social Media is only 1% behind mobile at 57% as the next most important aspect, and most recognise social media as a primary communications tool and is becoming one of the main ways they interact and engage with their audience.

82% believe their list is growing slowly or not all.  Data ages, people change and your list shrinks.  Without a process for active planning for acquisition and a continual focus on growing your list, your list will shrink and the quality will deteriorate. Keep in mind that both paid search and co-registration programs performed poorly in comparison to other list growth tactics such as offering exclusive content or using the good old website registration page.

And in terms of improving your email deliverability? This area is lacking somewhat. 60% of you provide an easy unsubscribe process, (But that’s still 30% of you who don’t) And only 50% of you remove bounces, and worse still only 40% report they regularly clean their lists. There is some work to be done here!

What about triggered emails? This powerful area of email marketing often brings the greatest results however it is sorely underutilised. Just 50% of respondents report they deploy welcome emails. That is 50% of people who don’t! And most other types of triggered email activity are only being used by 19% – 35% of respondents. Overall, surveyed marketers did not appear to commonly re-engage subscribers, as just 15% indicated their organisations sent win-back emails, and just 9% sent shopping cart abandonment reminders. That leaves a lot of room for improvement.

One of the biggest things that may be stopping people achieving all their email marketing goals is the fact that 54% report inadequate staffing resources, expertise or time, as noted in this comment: “Our greatest challenge is time. We have been doing email campaigning for about 18 months, so we are still learning. We have a robust database but lack time and resources to mine it like we could.”

One other area of concern that came out of this report was a lack of capability to properly segment and target recipients, as little more than half of respondents indicated they could segment their lists by email engagement behaviour (55%) or purchase history (53%), and just 38% said the same about user-declared personal preferences. Even fewer (28%) could segment based on user device habits. “This is telling, as it shows a distinct gap between marketer actions, and the wants and needs of subscribers”

So what’s the bottom line? “Email remains a marketer’s most effective tool in terms of content reach. But, even the widest-cast net won’t produce results if your readers aren’t compelled by your content, or, even worse, aren’t receiving it at all. Proper list growth and management, alongside engaging, consistently delivered content, are the keys to maximizing email effectiveness.”

In contrast to it’s deserved place as winner of marketing channels all time great cash cows, there has always been a challenge to get email the resourcing it deserves.

Don’t they love to talk about the demise of email.   Yes, everyone is talking on social media and instant messaging each other.  Yes, inboxes are crowded, and people are filtering more.

However despite all the rumours, email remains one of the most profitable and favoured marketing channels today and will remain so for the future.

Remember anyone who wants to buy anything online, connect with any social networks, use apps, message, needs the magic key – an email address!   If you need some ammunition to justify email marketing in your company, here are the facts.

• An impressive 77% of online consumers prefer to get permission-based marketing messages via email versus any other marketing channel, according to a recent study by ExactTarget — The 2012 Channel Preference Survey.
• This same ExactTarget study also showed that email drives consumer purchases more than any other marketing channel.
• The Direct Marketing Association’s Response Rate 2012 Report showed that email has the highest return on investment (ROI) compared to other marketing channels.
• The technology marketing research firm The Radicati Group, Inc., predicts the number of email accounts will increase from about 2.9 billion in 2010 to over 3.8 billion in 2014. This compares to a current 1.1 billion Facebook users, 1.5 billion Twitter users, 175 million LinkedIn users, and more than 10 million Pinterest users.
• Email is the top activity on smartphones and tablets, accounting for 41.6% of U.S. mobile Internet time, according to a recent Nielson survey.
• According to the Forrester Research Email Marketing Forecast, 2011 to 2016, the amount spent on email marketing in the United States is predicted to increase from about $1.7 million to nearly $2.5 million in 2016. The use of email marketing is growing because it works.

So, email remains the most effective way to deliver your message, it’s the #1 actvity on all smartphones and tablets, it drives the most conversions and consumer purchases more than any other marketing channel, and it’s the preferred communication stream for consumers.

Here at Jericho we really can’t stress enough how beneficial an effective email marketing program is to your business.

We also know you should be enhancing your email strategies by coordinating campaigns with other channels, such as social media, mobile, advertising, direct mail, (DM) and search engine optimization (SEO) and consistently testing everything so you know that your emails are hitting the mark.

Do you know what the general sentiment of your subscribers is towards you?

Online reputation is becoming more and more important, and you should be considering measuring sentiment as part of your marketing analysis. What is it and why is it important? That’s what we’re here to tell you.

Email marketers want to share information about their business, products and services, but all too often fail to deliver information in a way that’s engaging and helpful to their recipients. Copy might be one-sided and written in a way that says “this is what we want you to know about us”. Good copy is customer-centric and will consider what the subscribers want to hear.  Where are they?  What so they care about?  What do they want from you?

It is safe to assume your customers want to know more about your products and services, their features and their cost. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have opted-in to your list. But what’s most important to them is how those products and services help them with their day to day life, and their business, by saving time, money and resources.

What is ‘sentiment’?
Sentiment is the emotional side of customer relations – what does your customer think of your brand?  Customer research was traditionally used to understand this.   And in the past we know that if someone was unhappy they told 10 people and they told 10 people…    Now, if someone is unhappy they tell Twitter and they tell Facebook and even if your customer is relatively unpopular 500 people could hear all about their unsubstantiated complaint.  And, if you aren’t listening in the right places you might never know about any of it.   Sentiment is powerful.

How can sentiment affect your email marketing?
It makes sense that the more someone likes you the more they want to see you.  So sentiment will influence how your customer reacts to your email marketing.    If they have a positive sentiment/perception of you and your email marketing program then even if you emailed them every day they would still look forward to every single one. On the other hand, if your subscribers don’t like you, or how you use their email address, then even if you email them once a year it would still be too much.

How do you measure sentiment?
It’s hard.  How do you listen to every single one of your customers?  And, they use everyday language not a neat survey form to talk about how they feel about you, so it’s even harder to collect and analyse.   Many tools are available which can be used to gauge whether sentiment is positive or negative, and to see the keywords that are trending against brands.

Net Promoter (NPS) is popular with some of our clients as a methodology that can be used to gauge the loyalty of your customer relationships. Sending a quick questionnaire is an alternative to the traditional customer satisfaction research.   Asking your customer whether or not they would recommend you to others measures your customer’s happiness with you.

Should I measure sentiment?
Email marketers should pay attention to sentiment from all of the channels that are appropriate; from Facebook, Twitter and other social profiles and across the web in general, and respond to it proactively. Whether or not they have opted in to your email, sentiment factors into spam filtering decisions and sender reputation metrics.  If the recipient likes the email, and you, they will open and engage.  If they don’t they will use the mark as spam or delete buttons, and if that is the case, do not underestimate how important sentiment will be to your deliverability overall.

What does this mean for email marketing?
Email zealots like the ones here at Jericho believe that sentiment matters more than just clicks. Email marketing is consistently the marketing channel known for the best ROI and an outstanding ability to measure. However if your overall goal is to increase engagement and customer service, don’t just count clicks – consider customer relationships, engagement, perception, and sentiment too.  Show them the care and respect you have for them with a high quality, personal and relevant communication program, and you can more likely expect it in return.

If you are not already doing triggered welcome emails, you probably should be. Here at Jericho we encourage clients to look hard at what they are doing repetitively, and at their customer life cycle, and look for opportunities to add value and human touch.

It’s not surprising that timely, and relevant emails have the highest engagement rates, and deliver much better ROI than your usual ‘run of the mill’ emails.  And birthday emails have even higher engagement rates than other types of triggered emails?

“Triggered email is a really under used trick of email marketing, and just like optimising emails for mobile – if you are not already doing it, you are leaving your customers out in the cold.”

Triggered emails have higher opens, lower unsubscribes, and higher engagement rates, often leading to significant spending (just to name a few good things!) because they are personal, relevant and specifically targeted to the recipient.  They feel different.  They feel like they are ‘just for me’ – because they are.

The email relates to an event: an action the person has just performed or a date specific to them. So it goes without saying they will respond more positively to a triggered email that relates to them or something they are doing, or have just done. Welcome emails are STILL not used by many businesses, and studies have shown that the difference between getting a warm welcome, and not, can be many many thousands of dollars over the lifetime of that person. Post purchase & post visit work great too.  We have a client who sends a personal letter to everyone who visits their premium car showroom.   Other ideas are almost in the ‘infinity’ range!  Just ask us!

One of the hardest thing about email marketing is to consistently send emails that are relevant, personal and timely. Triggered email is the solution that makes the hardest thing the easiest thing by allowing you to automate your ‘customer love’.  Imagine if you could just tell your girlfriend that you love her and cook a lovely dinner once, and then hit a button and have it roll out every time she looks a bit sad!  Voila!

Triggered emails are triggered from a meaningful event or date such as a birthday, anniversary, online purchase, or membership club sign up. So you need data to trigger the email. This is where data collection and having a clean database is so important. However if you don’t have the data to create the triggers, you could use the email series functionality. You can use this as Jericho does and set up a series of welcome emails, where when someone signs up it triggers a series of emails to be sent at certain intervals (Once a week for a month for example) and each email could show the subscriber a new tip, or different information or new advice each week.

“Did you know welcome email series out-perform normal welcome emails in terms of ROI –this is even more under used and undervalued email marketing tool.”

Yes, yes, it all sounds great, however before you jump in; you need a plan.  You need to think about  your overall objective. Is it to get more customers? Sell more to each customer? Build reviews on your website?  Be the most credible company in your niche?   Whatever it is, a combination of measurable objectives and value to your subscribers will result in a more positive sentiment and higher engagement. (We will talk more about this in a future blog post).
So where to start? Well one of the best things you can do, both in terms of using triggered email functionality and increasing engagement, is to send Welcome emails, and triggered birthday emails.

As we’ve noted before, once you reach about 11 your birthday becomes less of a big deal, so when someone takes just a moment to remember your birthday it’s a lot better than nothing!   Yes as a business you don’t want to look creepy by knowing their birthday, however with the right copy and the right tone, sending a friendly yet professional birthday email is one of the nicest things you can do and you will undoubtedly brighten your subscriber’s day.   If you don’t have anything to sell then just say Hi!  But don’t underestimate the willingness we all have to buy ourselves the treat we won’t get from our loved ones!

Are you doing triggered emails now and perhaps want to supercharge them? Integrate dynamic content into your triggered emails…. For example you could use dynamic content to show the items in their shopping cart they ‘forgot’ or send different weather updates to people in different areas. There are many ways you could use triggered emails, and our team have lots of ideas.

If you want to talk about how you could use triggered emails, email series, and birthday emails to enhance your email marketing comms program, talk to your you Account Manager or the Jericho service team – phone 09 360 6463 or email accountservices@jericho.co.nz

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