Most brands are sending more email this year to some degree, according to Email Marketing Automation, a study by Ascend2.
Of the brands polled, 74% are increasing their send, 36%,
significantly, and 38% moderately. Another 20% are staying the same, and a mere 6% are decreasing their volume, 3% significantly.
But emailers face challenges, the most difficult ones
being:
- Maintaining an engaged list — 45%
- Reducing spam complaints — 37%
- Increasing email list size — 34%
- Achieving
measurable ROI — 33%
- Integrating email data with other systems — 29%
- Leveraging personalization effectively — 28%
- Optimizing for mobile —
22%
And the respondents listed several areas for improvement:
- Personalization — 43%
- Data quality — 39%
- Email design —
34%
- Messaging — 33%
- Types of content — 28%
- Calls—to—action (CTAs) — 23%
- Automation — 21%
- Testing — 16%
- Segmentation — 15%
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Despite all this, 38% rate their email programs as very successful at meeting the goals set for them — or best in
class.
Another 50% say they’re somewhat successful, and 12% are unsuccessful.
The brands polled do a certain amount of testing before they mail. They test:
- Design — 43%
- Deliverability — 36%
- Subject lines — 35%
- Subscriber verification—32%
- Accessibility — 31%
- Sender reputation/spam score — 28%
- HTML validation — 25%
- Device/Email client display — 23%
Their most effective automated emails
are:
- Welcome/thank you — 49%
- Survey/feedback — 46%
- Re-engagement — 32%
- Remarketing — 11%
- Personal
event — 30%
- Transactional — 21%
- Onboarding — 18%
- Abandoned cart — 15%
How long should they keep an inactive subscriber
before removing them from the list? Most would wait a fair amount of time:
- 2-6 months — 31%
- 6-12 months — 28%
- More than one year —
25%
- 1 month or less —16%
Ascend2 and its Research Partners surveyed 298 marketers in December 2020. Of those, 31% were B2B, 40% were B2C and 29% were B2B
and B2C equally.