Commentary

Reasons marketers are using e-mail

  • by December 5, 2000
Collecting data from experience and studies from several research firms, Boldfish (a developer of email solutions) has created an informative “marketing note” that describes many ways and reasons marketers are using e-mail as an effective medium to meet their strategic goals. Though subliminally commercial in content, the report contains some useful reminders for buyers and planners.

Included is a summary from a Forrester Research report showing how companies are using outbound e-mail:

 Promotions and discounts 66%
Newsletters 48%
Product Releases 34%
Advertising/marketing 28%
Alerts/reminders 24%
Market research 8%
Other 4%

Examples, included in the note, of organizations that use email campaigns are:

Retailers - Both online and click-and-mortar sites such as Nordstrom, Eddie Bauer, and Wine.com for product promotions Financial Organizations - Banks, Brokerage Houses, and others such as T. Rowe Price and Bank One are distributing portfolio updates and stock alerts

Publishing - The New York Times, Red Herring Magazine, and The Industry Standard are a few examples Corporations - Colgate-Palmolive uses email to send Investor Reports and Ernst & Young uses email to send out Industry alerts

Travel - TWA, American Airlines, and Southwest send notifications on special fares and confirmations Political Groups - Presidential election campaigns used email to send out election notices. The Sierra Club notifies members on a daily basis.

A Jupiter Communications 2000 report indicated the goals of companies' email marketing efforts:

 To Deepen the Relationship
with the Customer 61%
To Acquire New Customers 46%
To Cross-Sell 29%
To Up-Sell 29%
To Shorten the Purchase Cycle 18%
Other 11%

The "marketing note" goes on to include such information as:

Email generates the highest response rates and conversion rates of any direct marketing tool. Compared to average click-through rates of .65% for banner ads and average response rates of 1-2% for direct mail pieces, opt-in email's average response rate is 5-15%

Communications forecasts that the number of unique e-mail marketing messages will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 111% – from three billion in 1999 to 268 billion in 2005.

The marketing note can be read here.

Next story loading loading..