• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, April 22, 2002

Dean Tomasula of Direct Marketing News recently reported that two-thirds of the companies surveyed in the DMA's State of the E-Commerce Industry Report 2001-2002 said their sales in 2001 increased as a result of using e-mail marketing. Medium-sized companies reported the best results, with 59.8 percent seeing an increase from last year. Large companies reported a 47.1 percent increase and small companies said their sales rose 42.6 percent because of e-mail promotions.

In terms of budget allocation to eMail marketing:
- 13 percent of respondents said they allocated their total marketing budget
- smaller companies generally allocated 21.4 percent
- large companies allocated 13.4 percent
- medium-sized companies allocated 7 percent
- two-thirds said they were able to manage their e-mail marketing in-house

The DMA survey also reported that:
- 80 percent of respondents used plain text for e-mail marketing
- HTML-based messaging was used by 66 percent
- rich media by 12 percent
- streaming media by 7 percent

Of the companies surveyed regarding campaign effectiveness:
- two-thirds said they used clicktroughs to track the effectiveness
- 54 percent said they employed unique links as a tracking method
- 40 percent said they used embedded HTML code
- 29 percent used unsubscribes from targeted e-mail lists
- 27 percent used coupon codes
- 14 percent said they used banner ads

63 percent of respondents said e-mail marketing was their most effective customer retention tool, and 37 percent said e-mail was an effective customer acquisition tool.

Read the whole story here.