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%
The "marketing note" goes on to include such information as:
To Acquire New Customers 46%
To Cross-Sell 29%
To Up-Sell 29%
To Shorten the Purchase Cycle 18%
Other
11%
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.