Email soars but could still be better

Email marketing and SEO have been hailed as the marketing channels that achieve the best ROI – 25% of marketers say both rank as ‘excellent’ – even though most admit there is drastic room for improvement.
The latest Email Marketing Industry Census 2015 from Econsultancy/Adestra interviewed over 1,000 in-house and agency marketers and found that email marketing continues to deliver consistently high results year after year.
However, the study shows that an individual or team dedicated to email marketing achieves three times better ROI than when those responsible also have a myriad other marketing responsibilities. Yet a dedicated team is only available in the largest firms.
Furthermore, the more marketers can understand and use their email systems’ features, the higher the return. Companies using more than three-quarters of email system functionality are over six times more likely to achieve “excellent” ROI.
Despite the email channel producing such a high return, many marketers admit their campaigns have drastic room for improvement. When asked how they rate their email campaign performance, 59% stated it was ‘poor’ or ‘average’, and only 4% said ‘excellent’. The biggest barriers remain quality of database, lack of strategy and lack of integration.
Econsultancy research director Linus Gregoriadis said: “Email continues to be a tremendously important digital marketing discipline despite the emergence of shiny new tools which can distract marketers. Companies neglect this channel at their peril because email continues to be the fulcrum of an integrated and successful approach to marketing. With email becoming increasingly personalised and automated, the research shows there is no sign of this stopping.”