Email has been hailed as the leading digital channel for guaranteed ROI, in a new study which also claims one third of marketers now enjoy 20-50% of sales directly attributable to the channel.
The Adestra/Econsultancy Email Marketing Industry Census 2014 shows 68% of companies rate email as “good” or “excellent” in terms of ROI. This marks a 3% increase since last year, while the previously highest ranked digital marketing channel, search engine optimisation, dropped 8%.
Marketers are also deriving more revenue from their email marketing efforts. On average, companies are attributing 23% of their total sales to the email marketing channel, compared to 18% in 2013 – equivalent to a proportionate rise of 28% in just one year. However, companies are spending just 16% of their marketing budget on email.
The report also finds that email send volumes have risen, despite previous census results that pointed towards a slowing of growth. The proportion of companies sending more than one million emails per month has doubled since 2007, while the proportion of companies sending more than 100,000 emails has risen from 32% in 2007 to 50% this year. This shows that as more emails are sent through targeted, personalised and automated programmes, they become more relevant – and increased relevance equates to more revenue, the study says.
Steve Denner, director at Adestra, explains: “Yet again we can see that email is an extraordinary channel for delivering ROI. The danger for buyers of marketing technology is that they increase spend on email assuming continued growth in return. The danger for vendors is that they attempt to capture a greater proportion of the budgets available without providing real return.”
Marketers who are taking the time to plan and execute email campaigns with personalisation in mind are seeing the highest returns on their activity. Among marketers who have built campaigns incorporating advanced segmentation, 33% of those would rate their email ROI as “excellent” as opposed to just 13% of those not doing it.
One proven way to boost ROI is to make use of functions such as personalisation, automation, dynamic content and mobile optimisation. The report shows that there is a trend where email ROI increases markedly with increased use of email platform functionality.
Yet the report does show things aren’t all rosy. Email marketers rate their own campaign performance poorly – 58% said their own campaign results were “average” or “poor”.
For a copy of the Adestra/Econsultancy Email Marketing Industry Census 2014 click here