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.