The Marketing Institute of Ireland, in conjunction with Newsweaver, has surveyed Irish marketers for a second year running to gain insight into their email marketing strategies.

The survey gives insight into the levels of personalisation respondents use in their email, what metrics they track, average open and click-through rates, budgets for email and the challenges they are facing in email marketing.

Among the survey’s findings:

• Email marketing remains an essential part of Irish marketers’ marketing mix with over 79% of respondents stating that email marketing is either “important” or “very important”.
• There is a marked improvement in the level of personalisation and segmentation used by marketers in email campaigns.
• A large increase in the level of metrics tracked by marketers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns.
• While a large increase in email marketing tool sophistication was noted in this year’s survey, 46% of respondents still use their own standard email software such as Outlook to carry out email marketing campaigns.
• A 16% increase over 2008 results in the number of respondents sending campaigns “daily” to “at least once a month”.
• 62% of email databases contain less than 5000 addresses.
• B2C marketers use less personalisation (30%) than B2B marketers.
• Irish marketers plan to spend more (44%) rather than less on email marketing over the next 12 months.

You can download the pdf report here

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.

I’ve consistently come across this fact in the many trend/analysis reports I’ve put together for our B2B customers: The recipients of their monthly newsletter do not generally read every issue – but almost always read at least one in three issues.

It’s been an amazingly consistent metric whenever I perform this exercise. For example, with the  Business of Email monthly newsletter my general unique identified opens per issue is 23%. Across three issues it is 63%. I have seen some instances with clients in which it is 96% across three issues.

It’s a good metric to track periodically – to be slotted in alongside your regular issue-by-issue and 6-12 months trending. It can give you a ‘bigger picture’ as to how your readers are engaging with your newsletter. The 1-in-3-issues metric also reflects, I believe, the way business people interact with email that they do like to receive. It comes down to the matter of time or lack thereof. The latest edition arrives in the inbox when they are travelling and they don’t bother trying to catch up – just delete. The next time an issue arrives, they do have time. Another scenario – they are researching a purchase for the company, and are just collating all information they receive on the topic (such as your newsletter) for a full read at their convenience.

You can only measure this metric across three monthly issues when the recipients are fairly static – meaning that it’s pretty much the same subscribers across those three issues.  You collate all the identified readers, counting them only once, and calculate the percentage against the average number of emails delivered each time for those three issues.

A terrific line up of speakers.. and the break out sessions will cover three strands: B2B, not-for-profit or B2C.

I’ll be chairing the B2B session … hope to see you there!

Conference details

Who: DMA UK
What: A Practical Guide to Email Marketing
Date: Tuesday, 4 November 2008
Time: 9.00am – 4.30pm
Venue: Thistle Marble Arch, Bryanston Street, London W1H 7EH

Agenda

9.00 Registration and coffee

9.30 Chair’s welcome Jonathan Burston, Sales Director, CACI

9.40 Keynote address: Calling all email marketers: who’s best in class?

Jeanniey Mullen, CMO, Zinio and Founder, Email Experience Council
Dylan Boyd, VP of Sales and Strategy, eROI

11.10 – 11.30 Refreshments and networking

11.30 Seven ways to improve email response and revenues
Stephanie Miller, Global Markets Analyst, Return Path

12.00 Subject lines – length is everything
Dela Quist, CEO, Alchemy Worx

12.30 - 1.30 Lunch

————————————————————————–

1.30 – 3.30 Breakout sessions – Choose from one of the following sessions:
————————————————————————–

Session 1: Business-to-Business

Chair: denise cox, Newsletter Specialist, Newsweaver

Newsletters, blogs and search engine optimisation
Kath Pay, Managing Director, Ezemail

Myths and realities
Guy Hanson, Business Development Director, Database Group

Desigining for today’s inbox
Steve Kemish, Client Services Director, Adestra

Deliverability do’s: reaching the inbox
Will Schnabel, Vice President and General Manager of International Markets, Silverpop

Session 2: Business-to-Consumer

Chair: Simone Barratt, Managing Director, e-Dialog EMEA

Designing for today’s inbox
Steve Kemish, Client Services Director, Adestra

Deliverability do’s: reaching the inbox
Will Schnabel, Vice President and General Manager of International Markets, Silverpop

Improving the results of your email campaigns
Tamara Gielen, Director of Email and Digital Dialogue Strategies, OgilvyOne

Myths and realities
Guy Hanson, Business Development Director, Database Group

Session 3: Not-for-profit

Chair: Richard Gibson, Commercial Director, RSA Direct

Deliverability do’s: reaching the inbox
Will Schnabel, Vice President and General Manager of International Markets, Silverpop

Desigining for today’s inbox
Steve Kemish, Client Services Director, Adestra

Myths and realities
Guy Hanson, Business Development Director, Database Group

Hitting the Heart – A study and comparison of 15 well known charities
Simon Bird, Technical Director, dotMailer

3.30 - 3:50 Refreshments & networking

3:50 The future of email marketing
James Bunting, Head of Client Services, Communicator Corporation

16.20 Chair’s closing remarks
16.30 End of day

To Book:

Phone: Hannah Lang on 020 7291 3344
Email: hannah.lang@dma.org.uk
Cost: DMA members: Standard £295.00 + VAT (£346.63); Charity/sole trader £250.75 + VAT (£294.64)
Non members: £425.00 +VAT (£498.75); Charity/sole trader £361.25 + VAT (£424.47)

Results from a survey conducted by B2B Marketing Magazine and sponsored by Newsweaver …

Newsweaver: UK B2B marketers accelerate use of email marketing

According to email marketing provider Newsweaver, email is now an essential part of the B2B marketing mix. Based on a recent survey conducted by B2B Marketing Magazine and sponsored by Newsweaver, 78% of UK B2B marketers surveyed consider email to be either a “critical” or “very important” part of their marketing mix.

Of the 175 B2B marketers who completed the survey, 68% believe that the versatility of email is on the increase and are integrating email more into the overall marketing mix – over 40% of respondents said that they are now using email as part of integrated marketing campaigns. B2B marketers also see themselves as sophisticated users of email marketing with 67% stating that their understanding of email and how to leverage its effectiveness is either “excellent” or “good”. [Newsweaver's press release]

B2B Marketing magazine: Email continues its inexorable rise

B2B marketers are increasingly relying on email as a vehicle to engage with and sell to new clients, despite acknowledging that it is most effective as a customer retention or maintenance tool.

This is according to B2B Marketing’s annual email marketing survey, sponsored by Newsweaver, which reveals that 90 per cent of B2B marketers are currently using email to communicate with prospects. This is despite the fact that less than 20 per cent believe it is most effective at achieving this objective. The survey also revealed that ‘prospecting’ is the joint most popular use of email amongst B2B marketers, closely followed by ‘generating new sales leads’. [B2B Marketing magazine's press release]