Reports from Forrester Research and JupiterResearch Prove Email is in its Prime

Like a fine wine, email marketing has matured with age. No longer thought of as just another passing tech fad, email marketing has cemented itself as a meaningful advertising medium in the eyes of online marketers. And email continues to mature and grow strong, according to a new study released by Forrester Research.

Conducted by Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirk, “Email Marketing Comes of Age” offers some interesting insight into the evolving email channel. To start with, the study finds that email has reached almost universal penetration, with 97 percent of consumers and 94 percent of marketers using the medium. The report also helps to diffuse some of the concern that email has lost ifs effectiveness.

“It should not be a concern that it’s lost its effectiveness, it is still very powerful. It’s just that it’s become like direct mail, which is still an effective marketing tool, but people aren’t as excited about it,” explained VanBoskirk. Fair enough

Marketers need to fully comprehend the results and tailor their messages accordingly. They will help you to better define your multi-channel marketing spend and positively impact your bottom line. The report finds click through rates have remained stable at an average of 5 percent, since 2003. Email audiences have also remained steady. What’s more, consumers who buy products advertised in emails spend 138 percent more online than peers who don’t buy through email. In addition, 29 percent of all online consumers buy impulsively immediately following an email offer, rather than waiting. That certainly sounds like something to get excited about..

Consumers Share Their Thoughts on Email
Forrester Research reported on the nature of the email industry. Looking to gain insight into consumers’ attitudes and behavior towards email, JupiterResearch conducted the US Email Marketing Consumer Survey.. Analyst David Daniels shared some of the highlights of the survey results with a wide spectrum of email marketers on a conference call earlier this month. Overall, the results represents good news for email marketers and consumers alike: email is an important part of the consumer’s daily life.

While 45% of email users age 18-24 have multiple email accounts, more and more new Internet users have only a single account. Of those that do have multiple email accounts, very few – only about 15% - use a secondary email account that is exclusively dedicated to receiving marketing offers. More than half of the polled email users find transactional email messages including order conformations and statements to be extremely important. And, JupiterResearch finds that about half of all consumers are influenced to make a purchase online or offline because of a promotional email.

However, about half of the consumers interviewed remain somewhat skeptical about email because of spam. 53% of users unsubscribe from email offers when the content does not interest them. Despite the share of spam decreasing and permission-based email growing, it is vital for marketers to continue to send the most relevant email messages to see results. Some things never change.

If these results show anything, it proves that email marketers that know how to communicate with their audience will be successful.

Email Campaign Opens Eyes & Ears to New Audio Service

Datran Media is pleased to announce that its work with NASCAR.com has netted the racing website an Internet Advertising Competition award on behalf of the Web Marketing Association. That was a mouthful! Seriously, check out the website to see the full list of winners of the 2007 Internet Advertising Competition Awards.

NASCAR.com was honored with the Best of Show Email Message Campaign. Using Datran Media's email automation system, StormPost, NASCAR.com saw a 72% increase in subscriptions for its new audio service. Be sure to read the case study to learn how email helped NASCAR.com drive ROI. No pun intended. Okay, it was intended - but it was too hard to pass up that analogy.

The NASCAR.com email campaign has also been chosen as a finalist for best email marketing campaign for the 10th Annual ad:tech Awards! Stay tuned for those results!

NASCAR.com has proved that when used correctly, email is a powerful medium for connecting with consumers.  By understanding each and every consumer within the NASCAR.com database, StormPost managed to tailor messages based on user preference and send the most relevant marketing message.  Because of this flexibility, the email campaign continues to produce higher conversion rates than any other direct marketing campaign..

Q: “What is list churn and can I do anything about it?”

A: List "churn" is often used to describe the user lifecycle.  More specifically it is the rate at which members join and leave your list.  Some marketers measure list churn in regards to user reaction to a specific campaign while others take a more holistic perspective and measure churn independently of mailings.  Either way it is a very good idea to stay aware of what the average lifespan of a list member is as a general measurement of the health of your email campaign.

It is also important to realize that list churn is not necessarily a bad thing.  Users drop off for any number of reasons such as a change of job so just looking at unsubcribes is not enough.  By adding new subscribers, unique users and average member length (in mailings or in days) into the mix you'll get a better idea of a list's health.  Taking all those factors into account will give you a good barometer to judge campaign performance and assign a monetary value to your list.

If you’d like to learn more, Datran Media would be glad to discuss how you can leverage our expertise to outperform your email marketing goals and get your messages opened, read, and making money for you.   Contact us at 212.704.4806.

Send your questions to askanexpert@datranmedia.com. If we answer it, we'll send you a FREE Datran Media t-shirt!