Email Remains Strong Brand Marketing Tool

Marketing EmailDespite the rise of social, email remains a strong channel for brands to engage consumers.
 
In fact, email volume increased 10% from the second quarter of 2011 through the second quarter of 2012, according to new findings from Experian Marketing Services.
 
What’s more, total open rates increased 1.5% during the same time frame.
 
“More than 55% of brands had statistically significant increases in open rates for [the second quarter] 2012,” according to Regina Gray, vice president of strategic services at Experian’s CheetahMail unit.
 
“While click rates continued to show a year-over-year decline, there is some evidence that the rates are stabilizing,” Gray added.
 
She calls email "the most effective channel to connect with customers." Research indicates "a growing trend of brands utilizing social capabilities to acquire and engage consumers and fans across these new media channels.”
 
Broken down by sector, travel and consumer products and services emails reported the largest volume increases, with 41% and 19%, respectively. Media and entertainment emails also reported a double-digit increase of 17% year-over-year.
 
That said, there was only a 2% change in “all Industry” email volume from the first through the second quarter of 2012, as all verticals (except travel) experienced less growth than they did during the same period a year ago.
 
Experian’s report also analyzed second-quarter mailings that had a reference to a social media site in the mailing name or subject line of the email -- such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. They were then compared to the performance of all other mailings from the same clients for the same time period.
 
The findings: a 70% growth in brands sending ‘Like us’, ‘Follow us’ or ‘Pin us’ email campaigns.
 
Meanwhile, Pinterest ‘Pin us’ mailings generated unique click rates that were almost 25% higher than other mailings, while unique open rates for Twitter ‘Follow us’ mailings were 9.5% higher than those for their other mailings. Unique click rates were virtually identical to all of their other mailings.
 
Also of note, coupons had a 50% higher click rates and double the revenue per email than campaigns without such offers.

1 comment about "Email Remains Strong Brand Marketing Tool".
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  1. Erwin Hudelist from Erwin Hudelist LLC, August 31, 2012 at 2:22 p.m.

    I assume this is based on the US market. Is there any data on China e-mail marketing? Is there even a market for e-mail marketing in China yet? There is demand from US firms to go into this region. Thank you!

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