Commentary
Email Newsletters Convert Best For B2B; Sales Emails For B2C
- by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, February 22, 2012
Results from an Econsultancy survey released in February, conducted in partnership with the Email Experience Council of the DMA, and reported by Marketing Charts, show that 55% of client side marketers are using lead source to personalize/segment their mailings, while 53% are using demographic data. And, although only 49% currently personalize emails based on behavior, including recent purchase, time on site, and pages viewed, almost one-quarter plan to do so in the near future. By contrast, the proportion who already factor in business information is roughly equal to those who have no plans to do so (46% vs. 45%).
55% of organizations say they currently segment their emails by lead source (i.e. search, specific media, trade event), while a further 13% plan to do so in the near future. 53) also segment by demographic data, such as age, gender, and region. Among B2C respondents, demographic data is the most widespread personalization factor (67%), while among B2B respondents business information is the most common (71%).
Within the lead generation category, benchmarks are significantly higher for B2B than B2C companies for newsletter conversion rates, and sales email conversion rates. Within the direct sales category, B2B conversion rate benchmarks are higher for newsletters, although B2C conversion rate benchmarks are higher for sales emails.
Email Conversion Rate Benchmarks, B2B vs. B2C (February, 2012) | ||
| B2B | B2C |
Lead generation, newsletter | 4.1% | 1.8 |
Lead generation, sales | 3.9 | 1.5 |
Direct sales, newsletter | 2.1 | 1.7 |
Direct sales, sales | 1.4 | 1.8 |
Source: Econsultancy/Email Experience Council, February 2012 | ||
Additional benchmarks offered in the report include the Newsletter Open Rate at 25%, and the Newsletter Clickthrough Rate at 11%.
The study says that social media competing for readers’ time is the most significant challenge marketers face today, followed by budget challenges.
Challenges to Future Success in Email (% of Respondents) | ||||
| Degree of Challenge | |||
Challenge | Very Challenging | Somewhat | Easy to Overcome | Background Noise |
Competition with social media for recipients' time and attention | 25% | 50% | 18% | 8% |
Getting the budget and attention email programs deserve | 21 | 44 | 27 | 8 |
Measuring and proving the ROI of email marketing programs | 19 | 40 | 32 | 10 |
Young people abandoning email as a primary channel | 18 | 51 | 13 | 18 |
Integrating email with other marketing Channels | 17 | 44 | 35 | 4 |
Source: eConsultancy, February 2012 | ||||
According to data from the study, only 25% of respondents currently offer a mobile version of their emails to subscribers, although 37% plan to do so in the near future, says the report. The most popular preference offered to subscribers is format (HTML or text), by 65% of respondents, ahead of content (topics, news vs. sales info), by 58%.
For additional information from Econsultancy, and access to the PDF file of the study, please visit here.
Jack Loechner is the Editor of The Center for Media Research's daily Research Brief. You can reach him at jack@mediapost.com.
Can you define "conversions" for me?
newsletter conversion rates, and sales email conversion rates