• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, January 5, 2011

MarketingSherpa has conducted new research and comprehensively rewritten the 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report to provide marketers the data and insights needed to make informative marketing decisions.

Strategically, email plays an important role in achieving a wide range of marketing objectives. Tactically, email appears to have unlimited potential especially when integrated with emerging marketing channels like social media. As a mature tactic, performance improvements are no longer measured in quantum leaps but in incremental steps. But when multiple improvement tactics are combined, performance is accelerated.

This study shows a clear correlation between the phase of an organization's email marketing maturity and the effectiveness of its email programs, opines the report.

The phase of an organization's maturity is determined by the process they use (or don't use) to plan, execute, measure and report on email marketing programs. The segmentation demonstrates the disparity in the performance of email marketing programs by organizations in each phase of maturity.

Half of all organizations are stuck between Trial Phase and Strategic Phase of maturity:

Phases of Email Marketing Maturity
Phase	% of Organizations
Organization does not have a process or guidelines for performing email marketing.	14%
Organization has an informal process with a few guidelines they sporadically perform.	49%
Organization has a formal process with thorough guidelines they routinely perform.	37%)
Source: MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey, December 2010

How executives perceive email marketing's ability to produce a return on investment will determine the investment they are willing to make. Organizations in the strategic phase of email marketing maturity are about twice as likely to believe that email marketing is producing a ROI as are their counterparts in the transition and trial phases. Strategic phase organizations are more than twice as likely to increase email marketing budgets liberally in 2011 for continuous improvement.

Organization Perception Of Email Marketing ROI At Budget Time, By Maturity Phase (% of Corporate Responses)
Phase	Strategic phase	Transition phase	Trial phase
Email marketing is producing a ROI. Let's increase the budget liberally for continuous improvement.	38%	20$	19%
Email marketing will eventually produce a ROI. Let's increase the budget but do it conservatively.	38	43	41
Email marketing is unlikely to produce a ROI. Why invest more?	6	10	8
Email marketing is basically free. Let's keep it that way.	18	28	32
Source: MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey, December 2010

Email marketers continue to struggle with the challenge of delivering highly relevant content to their target audiences. Developing a sufficient amount of content is a time-intensive process that many marketers do not have the resources to produce. While relevancy will be the most significant challenge to email marketing effectiveness in 2011, there is a range of second tier issues

Most Significant Challenges To Email Marketing Effectiveness, By Primary Channel
Obstacle	Business channel (B2B)	Consumer channel (B2C)	Both channels (B2B2C)
Targeting recipients with highly relevant content	68%	66%	56%
Quantifying email marketing ROI	44	37	44
Improving email deliverability	41	39	31
Getting people to opt-in to email lists	40	46	42
Legitimate email being perceived as spam	38	35	36
Lack of an effective email marketing strategy	33%	33	40
Source: MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey, December 2010

The popular use of an email marketing tactic does not always reflect its effectiveness, says the report. For example, that the tactic of segmenting email campaigns based on behavior is used more often than automatically sending email based on triggers, which is more effective and less difficult to implement.

Three Dimensions Of Relevancy Tactics: Effectiveness, Difficulty And Use
	Approximate % of Difficulty/Effectiveness (100% = Most Difficult)
Usage	Degree of Difficulty	Level of Effectiveness
Automatically send email based on triggers	65%	55%
Segmented email campaigns based on behavior	80	50
Segmented email campaigns based on sales cycle	65	35
Dynamic personalized email content	50	35
Allowed subscribers to specify email preferences	42	32
Source: MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey, December 2010

Making it into the inbox is a perennial challenge for email marketers, observes the study. The effectiveness of tactics used to improve deliverability varies significantly and many marketers have shared their insights in this study on what works best for them.

Deliverability Improvements Offset By Continued Challenges
Deliverability Improvements	Measurably Worsening	Measurably Improving
Bounce back and undeliverable email	15%	37%
Missing rate (not delivered anywhere)	12	22
Inbox placement rate	11	21
Junk folder placement rate	18	19
Emails not opened in more than 6 months	18	18
Emails not clicked in more than 6 months	15	16
Source: MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey, December 2010

The vast majority of organizations track the fundamental delivery, open and click-through rates. But, there is no clear consensus on the formula used to calculate each of these metrics. These downstream metrics are essential to tracking ROI back to email campaigns, concludes the report

Email Marketing Metrics Tracked By Percentage Of Organizations Tracking Them
Metric	% Organizations Tracking
Click through rate	92%
Open rate	90
Delivery rate	81
Clicks per link in email	51
Clicks per email	51
Post click conversion rate	44
Response by list segment	36
Revenue per mail	33
Social sharing rate	18
Source: MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey, December 2010

Please visit MarketingSherpa here for additional information about this study, the Executive Summary, and access to the complete report.