Be Relevant! Email Marketing Blog

What will eCommerce look like in 2018?

What will ecommerce look like in 2018? This presentation by eConsultancy's Stefan Tornquist has some interesting stats.

Did you know that currently for every $92 spent acquiring visitors, only $1 is spent converting them? (Econsultancy, 2013) There is some serious work to be done in terms of conversion optimization!

Ecommerce 2018: optimizing for the customer of the future from Stefan Tornquist

A Look Into Email Marketing Trends for 2013

Email is one of the most profitable marketing channels today. Looking at all the new technology hitting the market it does seem like the sky is the limit. With this new technology comes new consumer expectations, and new email marketing trends.

Many of the trends in email marketing are heavily based on technology advances. Optimizing email messages, both in design and message, for mobile platforms appears to be the wave of the future. At least, this is the big topic for discussion around many marketing tables.

Let’s take a look at what the predictions and trends are for email marketing in 2013 and beyond.

Digging into the Details

There has been talk that email marketing is on its way out, but the data shows a different picture. Email itself is only increasing in popularity, especially as more devices make it so easy to check messages anywhere and anytime.

According to the Radicati Group, Inc., the number of email accounts reached 2.9 billion in 2010, and email currently outpaces accounts on Facebook and other similar sites. The group predicts that email accounts will grow to over 3.8 billion in 2014.

With the growing reliance on email, it’s no wonder that consumer behavior continues to be influenced by the inbox.  ExactTarget found that well over three-quarters of those surveyed in its 2012 Channel Preference Study preferred to get permission-based marketing messages via email versus other channels.

Impressively, the same study found that email drives consumer purchases more than any other marketing channel. Sixty-six percent of the respondents said they made a purchase based on a marketing email, followed by direct mail, telephone, Facebook and text message, in that order.

The email marketing trend is growing because it works, and if you aren’t on board, you should be. A Forrester Research Email Marketing Forecast, 2011 to 2016, the amount spent on email marketing in the United States will increase by just shy of $1 billion by 2016.  More and more companies are including email in overall marketing strategy, giving them a possible competitive edge over those who haven’t heeded the trends.

Image source: http://www.forrester.com/Forrester+Research+Email+Marketing+Forecast+2011+To+2016+US/fulltext/-/E-RES59101

It’s a Mad, Mobile World

According to Flurry Analytics, December 25, 2012, alone, saw 17.4 million new smartphones and tablets activated. Christmas week saw a record 50 million iOS and Android devices activated. There’s no question that we are firmly in the mobile age.

As such, it is predicted that email marketing will continue to evolve to be mobile-device friendly. And it should be. The data shows that consumers clearly are accessing and influenced by emails on their Smartphones and other mobile devices.

Here are just a few eye-opening stats:

• 79% of people use their smartphone for reading email, a higher percentage than those who use it to actually make phone calls. Adobe –2013 Digital Publishing Report: Retail Apps & Buying Habits (2013)
• More email is read by Mobile device than by desktop or via webmail. About 40% of email is now opened on a mobile device. Litmus –Email Analytics (Jan 2013)

In addition, mobile emails influence purchasing behavior. According to ExactTarget’s 2011 study Mobile Dependence, just over one-half of U.S. consumers who made at least one purchase using their Smartphone have done so because of a marketing email accessed via a mobile device.

Image source: www.ExactTarget.com/sff

Surprisingly, data shows that only a small amount of companies have optimized their email campaigns to be compatible with mobile devices. Only 14% of companies and 24% of agencies are designing emails specifically for mobile, according to the 2011 eConsultancy Conversion Rate Optimization Report. 

This could be the make or break for successful mobile email marketing, with good reason. Consumers often say they find reading emails harder on mobile devices than on computers; if they open a non-optimized marketing email via a mobile device, it could lead to disaster.

A 2012 BlueHornet study found that nearly 70% of consumers will delete an email immediately if it doesn’t display correctly: 

To be a successful email marketer, you would do well to get ahead of the curve, and consider making your messages mobile-friendly. 

Managing the Message

Now that we know the trends in email delivery, what are we looking at in terms of the emails themselves?

In 2013 and beyond, out are the one-size-fits-all email messages.

As technology becomes more sophisticated, so must the email marketing campaigns that we send. The basic tenets of email message crafting are the same, but some aspects are evolving.

1. Personalization:

According to the Aberdeen Group’s report, Email Marketing: Get Personal with Your Customers, personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14%, and conversion rates by 10%.

Blanket email blasts to an entire mail list are falling by the wayside. It is safe to say that email marketing will get better response if the message is personalized to the recipient. Analytics and data collection are key to tailoring your message for specific segments of your audience.

A way to kick personalization up a notch is by using triggered emails, where further emails are triggered by a recipient’s response, or lack thereof, to a previous email. According to Chad White, principal of marketing research at ExactTarget, email marketers using this and other sophisticated technology are significantly outperforming those that aren’t.

“Under invest in triggered emails at your own peril,” White relates.

2.     Visualization:

The popularity of sites like Pinterest and Instagram has shown that consumers are interested in images and visualization. This trend is predicted to carry over into email marketing, as well. Images, graphics and photos can all serve as visual aids to add impact to emails.

According to White, recent graphic developments, like special characters in subject lines, are here to stay. In addition, video in email will become much more popular due to new advancements.

“HTML5 video will finally deliver on the video in email experience that marketers have long craved,” he says.

3.     Integration:

Marketing across the various devices and channels available to consumers can give them a new experience with your brand. Messages that link to other social sites, like Facebook and Pinterest, or are accessible across several devices, are well-received, if not expected, by consumers.

If you plan to take advantage of this trend, make sure you present a clear theme that ties all channels and messages together.

The Trend to Follow

As you look at your email marketing strategies are you taking into account these trends? Technology, and most importantly mobile devices, are dictating the future of email campaigns. Are your messages responsive or mobile friendly? Do they engage a reader with a degree of personalization? Are they interesting or visual?

Ask yourself these questions and research how you can best integrate the trends to optimize your email marketing campaign returns.

 

Michael Zipursky is an author, consultant and entrepreneur. He is co-founder of the consulting blog, Business Consulting Buzz, a resource center with hundreds of articles and interviews helping consultants to become more successful. Michael is also actively involved with FreshGigs.ca, a jobsite specializing in marketing, communications and creative jobs in Canada. You can connect with Michael on Twitter @MichaelZipursky

 

 

Would you like to become a guest blogger on this blog as well? Get in touch!

5 Key Factors for Conversion Rate Optimization Success (infograph)

Okay, so this is not about email marketing, but I think it's very relevant for email marketers nonetheless.

The five key ingredients for successful conversion rate optimization are identified in a new report published by Econsultancy and RedEye this week. The research is based on a survey of almost 900 digital marketers carried out in July and August 2012.

Key Findings:

A structured approach and clear responsibility improve website conversion and sales. The other factors most closely correlated with success are usability testing, segmentation and multivariate or A/B (split) testing.

Looking specifically at optimization for mobile visitors, the proportion of organisations designing their websites specifically for mobile phones has increased from 25% to 35% since 2011. The proportion of companies designing their websites specifically for tablets has almost doubled, increasing from 13% in 2011 to 23% this year.

Other key survey findings:

• Companies with improved conversion in the last 12 months are performing on average 24% more tests and using 26% more methods to improve conversion than companies whose conversion had not improved. 
• Companies with improved conversion are also using 90% more ways to segment their visitors and customers than companies whose conversion had not improved. 
• 70% of companies who said they had a structured approach to conversion had improved sales. 
• Companies that adopt a structured approach are nearly twice as likely to have seen a large increase in sales. 
• 70% of companies enjoying a large increase in sales said they have a great deal or quite a lot of control over conversion, compared to only 38% of companies which have seen a decrease in sales. 
• Companies who incentivise staff based on improving conversion rates are nearly twice as likely to have seen a large increase in sales compared to those that didn’t. 

Here are (some of) the results in the form of an infograph:

Get your copy of the Conversion Rate Optimization Report 2012 (Price: 250 euro)

The State Of Email Marketing In SMBs - 2011 Report

GetResponse just published their latest “The State Of Email Marketing In SMBs. 2011 Report”.

The study analyzes the implementation of the most popular email marketing practices, strategies and trends amongst the SMB marketers.

Key findings

• The majority of respondents follow best practices and legal compliance regarding the subscription-based lead generation (79% respondents use sign up forms to build lists). 
• Large number of respondents declare high deliverability rates (62% claim deliverability at 95%), low complaint ratio (69% claim complaints ratio below 0.02%) and effective delivery to major client inboxes (68%). 
• Most respondents realize the importance of regular mailings (70%), personalization (58%), compelling subject line (68%), and stats analysis (61%). 
• Only 50% of the researched marketers integrate email with social media channel – a surprisingly low result, given the recent interest in the multi-channel marketing. 

Results by Size  

• Companies with 0-10 employees 
  This segment got the weakest results in the area of segmentation (32%) and reactivation campaigns (25%). Only 41% include social sharing icons in their newsletters.
• Companies with 11-250 employees 
  This segment performs best against other companies in contact acquisition via Facebook (82%). However this group has the lowest percentage in delivering newsletters in all major clients inbox (66%)
• Companies with 250-500 employees 
  This group stands out in using advanced segmentation techniques (72%) and split tests the most (78%). They performed worst, compared to the other groups, in getting their average complaint ratio below 0.2% (only 64%).
• Companies with more than 500 employees 
  This group definitely stands out in collecting contacts offline, e.g. at tradeshows, stores, using paper sign-up forms (above 75%). Also almost 90% of respondents check and analyze stats on the newsletters they send.

Results by Industry

Publishing and hi-tech are the top-ranking sectors. They are the most advanced in email marketing and in using best practices in their email campaigns. The lowest-ranking are non-profit organizations.

The study was conducted over a period of two weeks: November 14-28, 2011 and researched 600 respondents classified in 4 groups based on the business unit size and in 13 groups based on industry type.

Get the full report.

Australian Email Marketing Metrics Report

Email open rates for the first half of 2011 averaged 22.47% (Email Marketing Metrics Report Australia by Vision6).

Whilst metrics provide a benchmark for you to compare against, it's important you set your own benchmarks based on the performance of your own email campaigns.

Declining email open rates is a sign you are losing the attention of your subscribers and once you start losing attention, it’s very difficult to get it back.

So here are some practical tips you can apply right now to help improve open rates for your next campaign.

Email Continues To Be An Essential Part Of The Online Marketing Mix

Emailvision released the results of a survey revealing interesting insights regarding perceptions on and use of email as an important part of the marketing mix.  

The research was conducted by Emailvision in November 2011. 700 organizations from 10 countries (UK, US, France, Germany,Spain, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Scandinavia and Switzerland) were surveyed. 

Key findings:

• Email continues to grow in importance to the overall marketing mix: 89.2% of respondents stated that email remains the same or more important to their overall marketing strategy versus 2 years ago 
• Customer data is still underutilized: While marketers perceive email as a strong, high-ROI channel, 85% recognize that they are not fully leveraging the available customer data provided by their campaigns 
• While targeting and personalization are perceived as essential, few are fully implementing them into their campaigns: 97% of survey responders believe these are the most important factors in achieving the best response rates yet only 20% of those questioned said they were personalizing all of the emails they send

Emailvision has found that use of customer intelligence drives up to 30% higher click-through and response rates, in turn increasing ROI for each campaign.

The survey data confirms that marketers are ready to stop sending ‘one size fits all’ campaigns to their entire customer base, realizing that more targeted and relevant online marketing campaigns will increase their success rates.

Email Still King Of ROI At $40.56 For Every $1 Spent (DMA)

Once again, commercial email is returning vastly more for every dollar spent on it this year than every other marketing channel, according to the Direct Marketing Association’s just-released Power of Direct economic impact study.

Email is bringing in $40.56 for every dollar spent on it this year, according to the DMA. This is compared to catalogs’ ROI of $7.30, search’s return of $22.24, Internet display advertising’s return of $19.72 and mobile’s return of $10.51.

Commercial email is expected to drive $63.1 billion in sales this year, compared to $57.8 billion last year, according to the study.

The DMA projects email to drive $67.8 billion in sales in 2012 and $82.2 billion in sales in 2016.

Source: The Magill Report

How Many Fields Should Your Forms Have?

The folks over at Eloqua analyzed data from 1500 forms over the last 3 months and found, as I expected, that the less fields asked, the less friction for submission.

Of course, not all forms serve the same purpose:

• forms offering a trial: max 8 fields
• forms offering a download: max 11 fields 
• webinar event registration forms: max 5 fields

Read the full article here

Source: Eloqua

Behavioural Email Benchmark Study - Key Findings

• Generally the use of behavioural email is steadily increasing across all sectors (e-retail, insurance, gambling). 
• Gambling companies seem to be implementing the majority of triggers, with an average 70% using behavioural email across the triggers monitored. Statistically e-retailers are next in line, with an average 46% of e-retailers using behavioural email. The insurance sector is now lagging behind with an average of just 34% implementing behavioural email. 
• The number of behavioural email triggers implemented within the e-retail sector has increased across all emails monitored. 
• The welcome email is the most commonly used email, implemented by 90% of gambling companies and 64% of e-retailers. However, 25% of e-retailers do not even offer pre-purchase registration, meaning a welcome email cannot be sent. 
• Despite a slight increase in use since March 2011, abandoned basket email is still the least used behavioural email. This is unfortunate as based on conversion it can be viewed as the most successful email trigger used by retail clients. 
• On average retailers receive the highest CTR from using behavioural email. 
• Based on conversion the single most successful behavioural email trigger implemented by RedEye clients is the abandoned basket email, this is followed by the saved quote follow up email used by insurance companies.

Download the Behavioural Email Benchmark study here

Why The Position Of Your Email In The Inbox Is Unimportant

On the EmailVision blog, Tim Watson explains why you shouldn't worry too much about the best time to send an email.  

The answer as to why timing is not so sensitive lies in how people engage and process their email inbox.

In a small poll the folks over at EmailVision ran, 94% of people said that when returning to their inbox they scan ALL new or recent unread emails. This means your position in the inbox is relatively unimportant.

Your email will be scanned for a delete or read decision regardless of whether it's the top email or number 25. Your email will live and die by much stronger factors than time of day such as:

• Subject line and from name 
• Content relevance 
• Previous experience of your emails 
• Brand loyalty and engagement

Trying to time an email to a 2 to 5 hour slot is relatively unimportant. Your email will be deleted based on the above factors and not whether it was first seen at 10am or 2pm.

More important than time of day timing, is timing with regard to the customer lifecycle. Right message, right person, right time is often quoted. However, time doesn't mean 9am or 10am.

Perfect timing is reaching the customer when they are actively:

• Identifying a need 
• Researching options to fulfil a need 
• Deciding which offer to choose.

Read more here: Campaign send time isn't important 

Email Marketing Practices of the Top Online Retailers

Check out this presentation on Email Marketing Practices of the Top Online Retailers from Silverpop. Some good learnings here.

Subscribers Eager to Open Daily Deal Emails

February 2011 research from Yahoo! Mail and Ipsos OTX MediaCT found that US adult internet users subscribe to an average of almost three daily or weekly shopping emails or newsletters, and 56% of internet users subscribe to at least two of the emails.

Subscribers also say they regularly read the emails. Among those who subscribe to at least two, 61% said they read all of the messages. And most access the emails at least once a day.

 

More than six in 10 respondents reported subscribing to more of these emails now than last year, and nearly half were still excited enough about them that they said they “can’t wait” to see the latest deals in the messages.

The survey also found that for most consumers, daily deal emails are appearing in their main inbox. Just 27% of internet users said they had a separate email account for such offers, further reinforcing the perception among subscribers that these emails are desirable and relevant.

Source: eMarketer

India's first Email Marketing Trends Report

India's first Email Marketing Trends Report shows that Indian average open-rate is around 14-15% and  the average click-to-open rate is  10%.

The major reason for these low averages is the quality of email campaigns being conducted, according to the folks over at Juvlon, an Indian ESP. Apparently many senders in India are still using the medium for distributing what they call "posters" without intending to gauge response.

Apparently, India does not have an opt-in legislation so, this being the case, I'd say that these numbers are pretty much in line with what I'd expect them to be. The only way they can improve these averages is by focusing more on engaging readers, sending them valuable content and offers and move away from batch and blast type of campaigns.

It's a pity they only focussed on click-to-open rate in the report - I would have expected to also see the average click-through rate in this report.

You can download the Indian Email Marketing Trends Report here.

Use of Marketing Metrics and Tools

US marketers are no slouches when it comes to integrating new technologies and tactics with their email marketing efforts, according to data from summer 2010.

Source: eMarketer

Email Retargeting to More Than Double

The increase in retargeted advertising will be relatively small, but use of email remarketing will increase from about a third of online marketers to nearly three-quarters.

via www.emarketer.com

Social media marketing tactics US small businesses plan to integrate in 2010

 source: eMarketer

You have 2 seconds to make an impression

Litmus has been examining the data they've collected from their new Email Analytics tool and found that on average, 51.1% of readers spend less than 2 seconds looking at your email.

Source: Litmus

Reasons for not regularly opening email marketing messages

 

Study shows marketers must get to know more about their recipients than just a first name

 

Email Preferred Over Social Networks for Online Communications with Friends and Family

More stats: more than seven in 10 e-mail users told Windows Live they would rather talk to their friends and family through e-mail than through social networks.

 

Source: eMarketer