• by Jess Nelson , October 5, 2015

Adobe Campaign, Adobe Marketing Cloud’s email marketing solution, will be unveiling a new benchmark tool for email marketers on Tuesday at the DMA &THEN Conference.

The Adobe Email Marketing Self-Assessment evaluates the maturity level of marketers’ email programs and identifies key areas of strength and potential areas for improvement.

Adobe’s tool differentiates the maturity levels of email marketers into three distinct categories: classic, dynamic and contextual email marketers.

According to a joint study between Adobe and the Relevancy Group, also being released tomorrow, incorporating real-time, contextual data into email marketing campaigns can up ROI. Company research claims that contextual real-time data adoption can increase email marketing ROI by more than 400%.

Adobe partnered with The Relevancy Group to analyze the different strategies being utilized by email marketers. The study surveyed 220 email marketers in North America “across four key areas: data, delivery, content, and strategy,” says Patrick Tripp, senior product marketing manager, Adobe Campaign.

The majority (54%) of email marketers today are still classic marketers, followed by dynamic marketers (32%) and contextual marketers (14%), according to the report.  

“We find contextual marketers can get nearly four-times the monthly revenue of classical marketers,” says Nick Einstein, VP of research & principal analyst at the Relevancy Group.

Contextual marketers outperformed classic and dynamic marketers in data management and accessibility. They were more likely to incorporate content strategies that leverage visual content and contextual data, like date, time and weather.

Contextual marketers are also more likely to have a defined email strategy, and report higher levels of automated, real-time triggered and segmented emails.

Email marketing ranks as the top channel for driving revenue, followed by display advertising and social marketing. 91% of respondents selected email marketing as the most effective channel for driving revenue, according to the report.

Email marketing has an average return of interest of “$39 dollars for every $1 sent in email,” says Tripp. It is the “highest channel for marketing, still to this day.”

Tripp and Einstein say this may be because consumers spend an average of 6.3 hours on email a day. 18% of consumers said they check their email around the clock. Millennials check their email more frequently than any other age group, according to Adobe’s July 2015 Consumer Email Study.