Campaigns With Email Do Better Than Those Without, Study Finds

Email works best when used in multichannel campaigns, and those that include it outperform other marketing efforts, according to Meaningful Marketing Measurement: Email Focus, a study released Wednesday by the UK Data & Marketing Association (DMA), in partnership with Campaigner, a Ziff-Davis brand.  

Campaigns with email generate 2.8 total effects, versus 2.7 for those that do not include it. That includes 2.0 response effects and 0.5 business effects. But campaigns with both email and SMS do better, generating 3.1 effects.  

However, effectiveness for all campaigns, including email, fell by 33% during the latter part of the COVID-19 pandemic, dropping from 2.4 effects generated to 1.6 effects per campaign.  

The study is based on the DMA’s Intelligent Marketing Databank, which covers 1,057 DMA Awards entries. Of those,, 303 contain some form of email marketing. 

The database is built on reported campaign effects, a methodology the DMA says is necessary due to the lack of standardization in how awards entrants describe effectiveness. 

In the period studied, there were 2.0 response effects in campaigns with email, versus 1.8 for those without it. Those effects consist of donations, conversions, acquisitions, sales and other metrics used for direct-response and performance-marketing campaigns. 

Email also lifted campaigns in terms of all-important business effects: 0.5 compared to 0.4 of those without email. This group of impacts includes such metrics as profit, market share, customer penetration, loyalty and shareholder value. 

In addition, 9% of the effects recorded for email campaigns are business effects. 

Email performs the worst in terms of brand effects, those that measure such factors brand awareness, ad recall and brand trust.   

The study dismisses campaign delivery effects as vanity metrics. Click-through and click-to-open rates “ultimately say little about campaign effectiveness,” the report states. 

““The events of the last two years have placed greater importance on the role of the email channel, and indeed all personalized customer comms,” states Tim Bond, director of insight at the DMA.

Bond adds: “With a progressive and active CRM strategy, an up-to-date and replenished email list, and engaging personalized creative, email can deliver the audience engagement that marketers crave.”

 

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