E-Mail Marketing Getting High Click, Open, and Conversion Relative to Cost
Source MediaPost Communications
WebSurveyor Corp., partnering with Internet Retailer released an August survey of IR e-newsletter readers revealing that web merchants have very ambitious plans to increase both the size and scope of their e-mail marketing efforts. 18.4% expect to grow their opt-in lists by more than 50% within the next year, while another 25.1% will increase their lists by 16% to 50%.
Reported by Mark Brohan in a recent article, he says that 73% of chain retailers, catalogers, virtual merchants and consumer brand manufacturers taking part in the monthly survey on e-mail marketing, spend 5% of their marketing budget or less on e-mail marketing, yet just over half of respondents, 50.6%, report that 6% or more of their sales come from e-mail marketing, with 25% saying the proportion is over 11%.
The report found that
57% of the respondents have opt-in lists of fewer than 50,000 names
24.3% have 51,000 to 400,000 names
9.1% have 401,000 to 1 million names
10% have more than 1 million
63.8% of retailers conduct up to three e-mail campaigns each month and another 25.2% conduct between four and eight campaigns, says the report. 62.8% also indicate that they’ve increased the frequency of e-mail campaigns in the past year.
E-mail marketing consultants consider an open rate of about 20% and a click-through rate of 4% to 5% to be a highly effective e-mail campaign.
26.5% of participants in the survey report open rates of 20% or more (11.2% reported 20% to 25% while 15.3% said more than 25%)
11.8% report open rates of 16% to 19%
14.6% report e-mail open rates of less than 5%
6.2% say open rates of 1% or less.
Click-through and Conversion averages are growing:
17% report e-mail click-through rates of 16% or more
28.9% report click-through rates of 6% to 15%.
20.2% of respondents report e-mail sales conversion rates of 1% to 2%
26.5% with conversion averages of between 2.1% and 4%
14% with conversion rates of between 4.1%
10%, and 3.2% with sales conversion averages greater than 10%
Brohan concludes that by working smarter with existing resources while controlling costs, web retailers expect a sizeable return on their investment in e-mail marketing. Compared to the rising cost of paid search, he says, which can absorb up to 50% of a big retailer’s total annual online marketing budget, e-mail marketing remains relatively inexpensive.
41.6% of all retailers taking part in the research spend less than 1% of their total annual marketing budgets on e-mail. That compares with
31.3 % spend between 1% and 5%
13.8% commit 6% to 10%
5.6% spend from 11% to 15%
3.8% from 16% to 25%
4.1% with e-mail budgets that account for 25% of their overall marketing budgets
You can read the complete article at Internet Retailer.
Some other interesting findings indicate that themajority of people feel a direct attachment to email and see it as the main communication vehicle in their business lives. On the other hand, it’s starting to creep into our personal lives. People are starting to use email more and more to communicate with family and friends – will we ever talk again?
