Newsweaver recently sponsored an email marketing survey run by B2B Marketing magazine.  Here’s B2B Marketing magazine’s coverage in their June issue.

Here are my initial thoughts about the results:

Email continues to be an essential tool for B2B marketers in these financially uncertain times. Indications that email is providing a strong ROI for businesses include a growth in budget allocation, as well as an increased frequency in marketing campaigns.

Email is still viewed as a very effective communication tool with existing relationships, such as customers. In the last twelve months marketers have also extended and increased their email campaigns to include intermediaries and channel partners. This makes sense, because email excels at retention. In this day and age anyone can find anything cheaper and faster on the internet. Often the only key to holding customers is through loyalty built by value, reputation and customer care. Email allows the company to stay in touch and nurture these existing relationships throughout the business relationship life cycle, as well as offer additional selling opportunities to these existing customers.

With an increase in fortnightly marketing campaigns over monthly, frequency is now of prime interest to marketers. Testing can help find the right frequency balance. Though it was a less-tested variable over the last twelve months, those who did include it in their testing said the insight gained from the results helped increase the effectiveness of their campaigns.

Speaking of testing, while subject lines remained the top variable, it’s encouraging to see an increase in the testing of segmentation. Implementing even the most basic segmentation can increase clicks significantly (MarketingSherpa). In addition, segmentation can address the frequency issue by allowing marketers to target and send a campaign to specific subscribers, rather than the entire database.

The key? Without a doubt, emails that are timely (received at the right time) targeted (to the right recipient) and relevant (with the right message) are the most effective.

• Jul 1 : B2B Marketing magazine email usage survey
• Jun 26 : Irish Marketers: Take the Marketing Institute Email Marketing Survey
• Jun 23 : We are only as good as our last haircut
• Jun 8 : 16, 17 June Inbox/Outbox: The Future of Business Communications
• May 6 : Why isn’t your website capturing subscribers?