Email marketers are on a roll, with 79% of executives surveyed saying they are achieving their top priorities and 34% claiming they are best in class, according to Email Marketing Engagement, a
study released on Monday by Ascend2.
Their top goal, cited by 55%, is improving email engagement. But 43% also rated that as a “challenging barrier.” In addition, 48% see improving
sales revenue as a main objective.
Ascend2 and its Research Partners surveyed 273 executives -- 46% in B2B, 36% in B2C and 21% in both.
Of those polled, 34% say their email
effectiveness is increasing significantly and 52% say it is marginally improving. Another 12% feel it is decreasing to a marginal extent, and 2% that it’s significantly plummeting.
Of
all the types of email tactics, single topic campaigns are the most effective at improving engagement, specified by 46%, followed by new subscriber welcome emails (39%). Those two also require the
least effort. Automated/event-triggered emails are third, with 37%.
In contrast, integrated social media campaigns are described as effective by only 32%. Multi-topic campaigns are at the
bottom, with 31%.
Editors take note: newsletters with owned content have a slight edge in effectiveness over those with curated content — at 33% versus 32%. But they require more
work.
The respondents list the following strategic priorities for email marketing:
- Improving email engagement — 55%
- Increasing sales revenue —
48%
- Improving quality of leads — 45%
- Increasing lads generated — 42%
- Increasing conversion rates — 39%
- Reducing cost of marketing
— 22%
- Reducing sales cycle time — 18%
Yet some of those same goals are seen as barriers to success. The most challenging ones are improving the quality of leads
(45%), improving email engagement (43%) and boosting conversion rates (43%).
- Improving quality of leads — 45%
- Improving email engagement — 43%
- Increasing conversation rates—43%
- Increasing sales revenue — 33%
- Reducing cost of marketing — 26%
- Reducing sales cycle time — 24%
The study notes that the engagement pipeline starts with email subscribers and ends with sales revenue. Here is how and when they measure success:
- Pre-pipeline (new subscribers)
— 22%
- Early pipeline (opens, clicks) — 43%
- Mid-pipeline (form fills) — 24%
- Late pipeline (sales revenue) — 11%
Of the firms
reflected in the survey, 50% use a combination of outsource and in-house resources to executive email engagement tactics. Another 20% outsource to a specialist, and 20% rely only on in-house
capabilities.