Adestra, the UK based email marketing agency, have been holding an email marketing clinic at today’s Online Marketing Show in London. Many marketers from both B2B and B2C companies have had their email marketing program reviewed by an Adestra expert which revealed a surprising common thread of issues:

Data Management: Many marketers are only capturing email address and failing to use follow-up communications to capture further information. From demographics to coherent reporting lines to feed back recipient behaviour, marketers’ databases are limited to contain only the information from the first contact.

Reporting: Drowning in simple metrics such as clicks and opens, many marketers are unable to use the results of their campaigns in strategic decision making or for calculating return on investment (ROI). Many marketers are finding that their senior management perceive email as a cheap channel and not a traditional, measurable direct marketing channel. Only being able to provide limited reporting feeds this view.

Tracking technology: Many marketers do not use robust tracking systems, finding them technologically complicated. Costly web analytics packages are being deployed in some cases, but on the whole, many marketers are ignoring simple tactics such as duplicating a product marketing page and tracking orders through it.

Steve Denner, Director of Adestra commented "After a long day and many conversations with many email marketers, almost everyone I’ve met uses email marketing intelligently. However, it is really refreshing that these marketers recognise there are ways in which they can improve their marketing further and I’m glad that Adestra have been able to provide some practical and helpful advice to help them do this."

Source: ClickPress