Email Marketing Survey, how to make campaigns more effective

An recent article by Mark Brohan on Internet Retailer survey: A missed message evaluated the results of a survey conducted with 302 web merchants.

The survey discovered some interesting facts on the effectiveness of email marketing and the popularity of emails as a key marketing tool. This articles discusses some of the survey findings and analyse how merchants can improve on their email marketing strategy.

To begin, email marketing industry standards state that in order for a email marketing campaign to be considered effective it must have a delivery rate of 80% to 85% and an open rate of 35%.

Survey Result
Of the 302 merchants surveyed only 59.3% of them had acceptable email delivery rates

Solution
A low delivery rate is often a reflection of a ill maintained mailing list. It is crucial to maintain your mailing to remain as current as possible.

sitecast Wiliam’s email marketing solution allows users to easily manage, update and edit their mailing list to ensure that all email campaigns are as effective as possible.

In addition the ability to manage and export bounce emails from the mailing is another technique of ensuring email campaigns have the highest delivery rate.

Survey Result
Low opening rates only 24.2% of web merchants have an open rate greater than 25% and 17.1% of web merchants have a click through rate of 15.1% or more.

Solution
Low opening rates and click through are often a reflection the emails subject line and content.

In order to increase a email campaigns open rate and click through it is important that the subject line is exciting and grabs the users attention. In addition email clients are now offering users preview features, therefore not only is the subject line important the first three lines of the content within the email also needs to be considered.

The key is to motivate the user to open the email, what reason could drive them and interest them to take action. It is also noted that the more personlised your email the more effective  it is in getting a users attention and persuading them to take action and make a purchase.

Survey Result
Low sales conversion rate, the user has opened the email but why is he/she not taking action and making a purchase.

Solution
Following on from the previous solution, emails need to be specifically targeted to different groups. The more relevant a email is to a user the more likely the user is going to take action and convert.

A case study of Fossil Inc reveals that after segmenting their email marketing list to categories and demographics they immediately experienced a improvement in the conversion of customers from email marketing campaigns.

Therefore think about your company’s mailing list and the different ways of segmenting the list before you send out your next email campaign, by segmenting the list and specifically targeting difference audiences it will offer recipients a much more personalised, relevant and rewarding experience. In the end the recipient will be more likely to open, click through and convert from the email campaign.

In conclusion the survey indicates that marketers understand that there is a need for email marketing although there are many that are not using the technology effectively and gaining the desired or potential results. Furthermore an effective email marketing campaign will potentially deliver 3 key things to your business

Increase sales
Improve customer retention
Attract potential customers

Therefore it’s not a matter of when your business should implement a email marketing campaign but how your business should implement an efficient email marketing campaign that really works for your business.