Email is still performing strongly for marketers, even though they don’t spend enough time optimising their campaigns, a study suggests.
Some 66% of 1,300 in-house marketers questioned for the seventh Email Marketing Census, from Econsultancy and Adestra , said that email delivers an excellent or good return on their investment, and 55% of responding companies say that more than 10% of sales comes from their email.
The research found that only 39% of in-house marketeters say their companies’ campaigns are excellent or good, while 15% admit they are poor. More than a quarter (27%) say they spend no time optimising their campaigns, up from 21% in 2008, and only 19% spend more than two hours doing so. Some 62%, however, spend that amount of time on their design and content.
Econsultancy research director Linus Gregoriadis said: “Seven years of Email Census data show that email continues to be a key channel for maters, continuing to drive sales and delivering strong ROI for businesses.
“However, many companies are still procrastinating when it comes to best practice and optimisation. Too many businesses are still only planning to make improvements to their email marketing efforts, rather than taking the plunge and putting best practice into action.”
Henry Hyder-Smith, managing director and co-founder of Adestra, said: “For the first time this year we asked marketers to rate their email marketing performance and the results are shocking. Almost two thirds of respondents (60%) admit to poor or average performance. It seems remarkable that marketers have been so open and self-deprecating. If it was an end of year exam, marketers would be failing badly. However, on a positive note, it does open up lots of areas for improvement.”
