October 13, 2014
Consumers have love/hate relationship with e-mail marketing
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from MarketingCharts, a Watershed Publishing publication providing up-to-the-minute data and research to marketers.
E-mail marketing continues to regularly rank as one of the most effective digital marketing tactics, but 42 percent of U.S. online adults delete most e-mail advertising without reading it, according to a recent study from Forrester Research.
That still marks improvement from 44 percent in 2012 and 59 percent in 2010. Similarly, the percentage of consumers agreeing that most e-mail ads they receive don’t offer anything that interests them fell by three percent points from 2012 to 38 percent this year.
Where comparisons are made with the 2010 survey, there appears to be a clear trend towards improved attitudes, as more consumers agree that e-mail offers are a great way to find out about new products or promotions and fewer complain of receiving too many e-mail offers and promotions. Indeed, even with those positive trends, the report indicates that e-mail marketers face challenges. Consider that:
- Respondents were much more likely to say that most e-mail ads they receive don’t offer anything that interests them (38 percent) than to say that e-mail offers are a great way to find out about new products or promotions (24 percent); and,
- They were more than twice as likely to say they delete most e-mail advertising without reading it (42 percent) than they were to say they read most e-mail ads just in case something catches their eye (19 percent).
Lack of subscriber engagement was the impetus behind MarketingCharts’ latest Debrief, "Why Consumers Open Brand E-mails." Through primary research conducted among e-mail subscribers, the Debrief reveals that engagement isn’t just about offers and promotions, however welcome they may be. Indeed, consumers actively preview e-mails before opening them, and timing may also play a role in their e-mail-driven purchases.
In other results from the Forrester Research study:
- Younger adults report an above-average inclination to often make purchases through promotional e-mails; and,
- About one in eight (13 percent) of respondents have manually turned on the images in a promotional e-mail during the past 12 months, down from 18 percent in 2012.
The Forrester Research study was based on a survey of 33,546 U.S. online adults.
- Consumer Attitudes To E-mail Marketing Reveal Improvements, Challenges – MarketingCharts
- Take Advantage Of Positive E-mail Attitudes – Forrester
- Will e-mail likely become a [Debrief] Why Consumers Open Brand E-mails? – MarketingCharts
- Marketers Continue to Rate E-mail the Most Effective Digital Marketing Tactic – MarketingCharts
- Digital Marketing Strategy – Ascend2
- E-mail Rated Most Effective Digital Marketing Tactic – MarketingCharts
- Workhorses and Dark Horses – Digital Tactics for Customer Acquisition – GigaOM
- Global Marketers Still Rate SEO, E-mail Marketing As Tops for ROI – MarketingCharts
- E-mail Marketing Industry Census 2014 – Econsultancy
BrainTrust
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
Have you seen improvements in retailers’ email marketing practices? What else could they be doing to improve e-mail subscriber engagement and open rates? Do you expect e-mail to become a more or less important component of digital marketing for retailers over the next three to five years?
Poll
Email is not going away and while it’s improving, there is still too much reliance from marketers on the idea the more is better. Discipline, data and design are all elements still lacking on many if not most email campaigns and thus the fact that nearly 40 percent of consumers see little value or relevance.
Relevance and personalization engage customers and drive real improvements in email performance. The challenges are that too many CMOs are still “above the line” (i.e., mass-marketing) focused and correspondingly uncomfortable or unfamiliar with data-driven customer marketing.
All that said, it’s clearly getting better and we are seeing more and more brands focused on data and relevant dialogue with customers.
These statistics are fantastic for the cost of email marketing. It is cheap and when done right it can be very effective.
Email marketing shouldn’t be about sending promotion after promotion and hoping someone bites.
It should follow the Nike model. Email marketing should be a piece of your entire marketing puzzle. It should help to enhance the value proposition of your brand and further the integration of the customer into the retailer’s ecosystem.
Send emails to your customers about interesting things that relate to your products. For example, if your product is cotton t-shirts that help absorb sweat, it would be far more useful to a consumer to find out that absorption of sweat improves body odor by 80 percent which leads to improved social life. I am making that up, but you get my point.
Also, there are many great tools on the Internet now that allow a marketer to get incredibly accurate analytical information from email marketing. This allow for automation and scoring. So the idea is that a marketer can send out auxiliary information to users first to get their trust and interest, find out who is interested, then gradually start building-in promotions for products to those interested users.
Email marketing works, and is very effective when done right.
One major improvement in email coverage is that oftentimes consumers have agreed to receive emails from the marketer. I suggest that improves the willingness to consider emails from marketers. Within that context the numbers look good, especially if the number of consumers receiving those emails has increased.
The article points out that 24 percent say that “e-mail offers are a great way to find out about new products or promotions.” I didn’t notice the numbers associated with the universe of email recipients. But in the spirit of making a point, 24 percent of 10,000,000 represent much better revenue than even 90 percent of 1,000,000.
So if more consumers are willing to receive emails, i.e., opting-in, then chances are good there will be more shoppers receptive to at least some of the promotions some of the time. It’s a matter of upping the odds.
Personally, I consider email ads to be spam so I have not seen improvements in retailers’ email marketing practices. I expect mobile, SMS, MMS and RMM to become more important over the next three to five years and as a result email marketing will hopefully decline.
I’m not keen on email marketing, it can be bothersome and intrusive more than helpful, but I agree with Gajendra Ratnavel that if you’re going to do it, you have to do it right, with the right value proposition. We always want to know why something makes our life better, not just that we need it because you’re trying to sell it. This has always been true of sales of any kind and email marketing is no different. The first “rub” is getting the recipient to open the email to begin with.
Email marketing efforts are a good way for a company to promote themselves and keep consumers up-to-date with their latest products and services, specials, offers and any new changes. It is true, however, that many of those emails end up getting deleted or sent to the spam folder without even being opened. One improvement I see in retailers’ email marketing practices is that their subject lines have become catchy. The more a subject line can become personal and interesting, the better the chance is of the email being opened. If the subject line can demonstrate that the consumer’s needs will be fulfilled by opening the email, the consumer would be more inclined to open it. People get tons of emails these days and are only looking to read emails that bear relevance to them. A catchy subject line that demonstrates an offer benefiting the consumer helps the emails get opened and read.
Another idea that would help email marketing efforts is deciding on the frequency. It is best if retailers study consumers’ behaviors to determine how regularly to send out their emails. Many people get annoyed if they are getting sent an email every day from a subscriber, but may be more receptive if it’s once or twice a week. I think email marketing practices will be relevant for a few more years, however, I think social media will be the more dominant ally for marketing efforts. People are paying more attention to what they read on their newsfeed when they log onto Facebook or Twitter than they are when checking their inbox.
In the past some retailers believed that the direct visible cost of sending digital communications were so low that they could bombard the market with communications in the hope that something would work, and that something was better than nothing. But the reality is that the non-visible costs in terms of negative consumer perception are very high, with many consumers finding these irrelevant communications a huge disincentive to reward the retailer with their patronage.
Some leading retailers have made attempts to improve their approach by becoming more customer-centric in their digital communications. These leaders moved away from the approach of designing a campaign and then sending it to all customers or to a set of customers that meet a certain profile. Instead they work to understand individual customer needs and then let those customer needs design the communications. Everything about the communication (the creative, the copy, the products, the discounts, the spend-stretch levels, the combination of offer types, the channel of delivery and the timing of the communication) is completely personalized. As a result, response rates are significantly higher and the incremental sales and ROI have leapt into significant positive territory. As long as retailers make their communications more personalized then consumers will respond positively and these approaches will continue to gain traction within the overall marketing mix.
Email is a low-cost and effective way to market. Retailers are providing more contextual and personalized emails by using the customer data at hand and driving even better utilization of their marketing spend. Email will become even more personalized and refined over the next three to five years as retailers continue to mine the consumer data they have.
I’ve noticed a few more retailers use email headlines that say a coupon is attached, or that a special sale is upcoming on items previously purchased (a pet products supply store does this very effectively). This works, and I always open those emails. A favorite sports team has gotten good at pointing out special event nights and promotions and giveaways as an added incentive to get people in the stands at the last minute. More and more though, I just see retailers using my name in the header in an attempt to be more personal. But the ad itself is not personalized or interesting in any way.
I do not find most mass marketing emails to be at all worthwhile and frankly most retailers do not seem to have either the will or the wherewithal to personalize them or make them so.
As Graeme points out, personalization can be a key component of an effective email strategy. Consumers are likely to remember and favor a retailer that can send them email that is tailored to their preferences, purchase history, interests and activities over ones that just limit their creative and messaging to referencing the time of year or this week’s discount.
The demise of email marketing has been forecast for the past couple of years by a number of prognosticators. I won’t be one of them at this stage.
The simple reason lies in the fact that the consumer is making use of email for their decision-making on search and purchase plans. Based on Prosper Insights & Analytics’ surveys of 15,000+ respondents, 77.7% of the Millennial Generation uses their Mobile Devices Regularly/Occasionally to read emails, while 75.6% of Generation X hold that view. 52.4% of Boomers are beginning to use Mobile Devices Regularly/Occasionally for email reads. This is a growing pattern.
In addition, when respondents are asked on a retail category basis of Influences on their purchase, the Digital medium of email registers positively for Electronics – Gen Y 31.8%, Gen X 26.8%, and Boomers 21.3%; Apparel purchases are also Influenced by email — 32.4% of Gen Y, 33.2% of Gen X, and 24.3% of Boomers. Dining Out, Grocery, and Home Improvement have these generations in the mid-teens to low twenties in terms of Influence of email on their purchase.
Email plays lower on Influence for Auto, Medicines, Telecom and Financial/Insurance. Don’t count this medium out of the mix. It has a home in the allocation if the retailer and the channel have the right message and offering.
For those retailers who “get it,” I have seen vast improvement. Targeted, more editorial language and approach, speaking from the POV of being on the journey with them.
I do think email will remain an important vehicle for at least the next 5 years. Consumers are far more tolerant of receiving those emails they have subscribed to. Perhaps they will stumble on a great deal or the perfect gift they had not thought about. Yeah, it’s worth taking the minute every now and then to read or just preview the message before deleting.
But retailers, know that today’s consumer does not want to be SOLD to! They do not want to be buried in email and they really believe that “text is for friends,” so stay away unless invited.
And that’s my 2 cents!
I have definitely seen huge improvements with some retail merchants, both large and small. Some of the best innovations are coming from retailers. Merchants need to leverage some of the tools available in the market today to gain deep insights in their target audience and help avoid annoying emails to shoppers.
The bigger question is, “Where is e-mail itself headed in the next 3 to 5 years?” I find it hard to believe that anyone could effectively predict that future.
Email is like any other form of marketing and advertising. If the consumer wants to change channels on their TV when the commercials come on, they do. If they want to delete an email, they do. The key is to target the email marketing to the right consumer—one who has expressed or proved to have interest. Don’t expect 100 percent open rates. That’s a dream. Even 20 percent is considered amazing. Give value versus blatant marketing and you might have a better chance at grabbing the consumer. It doesn’t matter if email is more or less important. The magic is in the mix of media. Email is an inexpensive medium that with even a small return can yield good results.
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Email is not going away and while it’s improving, there is still too much reliance from marketers on the idea the more is better. Discipline, data and design are all elements still lacking on many if not most email campaigns and thus the fact that nearly 40 percent of consumers see little value or relevance.
Relevance and personalization engage customers and drive real improvements in email performance. The challenges are that too many CMOs are still “above the line” (i.e., mass-marketing) focused and correspondingly uncomfortable or unfamiliar with data-driven customer marketing.
All that said, it’s clearly getting better and we are seeing more and more brands focused on data and relevant dialogue with customers.
These statistics are fantastic for the cost of email marketing. It is cheap and when done right it can be very effective.
Email marketing shouldn’t be about sending promotion after promotion and hoping someone bites.
It should follow the Nike model. Email marketing should be a piece of your entire marketing puzzle. It should help to enhance the value proposition of your brand and further the integration of the customer into the retailer’s ecosystem.
Send emails to your customers about interesting things that relate to your products. For example, if your product is cotton t-shirts that help absorb sweat, it would be far more useful to a consumer to find out that absorption of sweat improves body odor by 80 percent which leads to improved social life. I am making that up, but you get my point.
Also, there are many great tools on the Internet now that allow a marketer to get incredibly accurate analytical information from email marketing. This allow for automation and scoring. So the idea is that a marketer can send out auxiliary information to users first to get their trust and interest, find out who is interested, then gradually start building-in promotions for products to those interested users.
Email marketing works, and is very effective when done right.
One major improvement in email coverage is that oftentimes consumers have agreed to receive emails from the marketer. I suggest that improves the willingness to consider emails from marketers. Within that context the numbers look good, especially if the number of consumers receiving those emails has increased.
The article points out that 24 percent say that “e-mail offers are a great way to find out about new products or promotions.” I didn’t notice the numbers associated with the universe of email recipients. But in the spirit of making a point, 24 percent of 10,000,000 represent much better revenue than even 90 percent of 1,000,000.
So if more consumers are willing to receive emails, i.e., opting-in, then chances are good there will be more shoppers receptive to at least some of the promotions some of the time. It’s a matter of upping the odds.
Personally, I consider email ads to be spam so I have not seen improvements in retailers’ email marketing practices. I expect mobile, SMS, MMS and RMM to become more important over the next three to five years and as a result email marketing will hopefully decline.
I’m not keen on email marketing, it can be bothersome and intrusive more than helpful, but I agree with Gajendra Ratnavel that if you’re going to do it, you have to do it right, with the right value proposition. We always want to know why something makes our life better, not just that we need it because you’re trying to sell it. This has always been true of sales of any kind and email marketing is no different. The first “rub” is getting the recipient to open the email to begin with.
Email marketing efforts are a good way for a company to promote themselves and keep consumers up-to-date with their latest products and services, specials, offers and any new changes. It is true, however, that many of those emails end up getting deleted or sent to the spam folder without even being opened. One improvement I see in retailers’ email marketing practices is that their subject lines have become catchy. The more a subject line can become personal and interesting, the better the chance is of the email being opened. If the subject line can demonstrate that the consumer’s needs will be fulfilled by opening the email, the consumer would be more inclined to open it. People get tons of emails these days and are only looking to read emails that bear relevance to them. A catchy subject line that demonstrates an offer benefiting the consumer helps the emails get opened and read.
Another idea that would help email marketing efforts is deciding on the frequency. It is best if retailers study consumers’ behaviors to determine how regularly to send out their emails. Many people get annoyed if they are getting sent an email every day from a subscriber, but may be more receptive if it’s once or twice a week. I think email marketing practices will be relevant for a few more years, however, I think social media will be the more dominant ally for marketing efforts. People are paying more attention to what they read on their newsfeed when they log onto Facebook or Twitter than they are when checking their inbox.
In the past some retailers believed that the direct visible cost of sending digital communications were so low that they could bombard the market with communications in the hope that something would work, and that something was better than nothing. But the reality is that the non-visible costs in terms of negative consumer perception are very high, with many consumers finding these irrelevant communications a huge disincentive to reward the retailer with their patronage.
Some leading retailers have made attempts to improve their approach by becoming more customer-centric in their digital communications. These leaders moved away from the approach of designing a campaign and then sending it to all customers or to a set of customers that meet a certain profile. Instead they work to understand individual customer needs and then let those customer needs design the communications. Everything about the communication (the creative, the copy, the products, the discounts, the spend-stretch levels, the combination of offer types, the channel of delivery and the timing of the communication) is completely personalized. As a result, response rates are significantly higher and the incremental sales and ROI have leapt into significant positive territory. As long as retailers make their communications more personalized then consumers will respond positively and these approaches will continue to gain traction within the overall marketing mix.
Email is a low-cost and effective way to market. Retailers are providing more contextual and personalized emails by using the customer data at hand and driving even better utilization of their marketing spend. Email will become even more personalized and refined over the next three to five years as retailers continue to mine the consumer data they have.
I’ve noticed a few more retailers use email headlines that say a coupon is attached, or that a special sale is upcoming on items previously purchased (a pet products supply store does this very effectively). This works, and I always open those emails. A favorite sports team has gotten good at pointing out special event nights and promotions and giveaways as an added incentive to get people in the stands at the last minute. More and more though, I just see retailers using my name in the header in an attempt to be more personal. But the ad itself is not personalized or interesting in any way.
I do not find most mass marketing emails to be at all worthwhile and frankly most retailers do not seem to have either the will or the wherewithal to personalize them or make them so.
As Graeme points out, personalization can be a key component of an effective email strategy. Consumers are likely to remember and favor a retailer that can send them email that is tailored to their preferences, purchase history, interests and activities over ones that just limit their creative and messaging to referencing the time of year or this week’s discount.
The demise of email marketing has been forecast for the past couple of years by a number of prognosticators. I won’t be one of them at this stage.
The simple reason lies in the fact that the consumer is making use of email for their decision-making on search and purchase plans. Based on Prosper Insights & Analytics’ surveys of 15,000+ respondents, 77.7% of the Millennial Generation uses their Mobile Devices Regularly/Occasionally to read emails, while 75.6% of Generation X hold that view. 52.4% of Boomers are beginning to use Mobile Devices Regularly/Occasionally for email reads. This is a growing pattern.
In addition, when respondents are asked on a retail category basis of Influences on their purchase, the Digital medium of email registers positively for Electronics – Gen Y 31.8%, Gen X 26.8%, and Boomers 21.3%; Apparel purchases are also Influenced by email — 32.4% of Gen Y, 33.2% of Gen X, and 24.3% of Boomers. Dining Out, Grocery, and Home Improvement have these generations in the mid-teens to low twenties in terms of Influence of email on their purchase.
Email plays lower on Influence for Auto, Medicines, Telecom and Financial/Insurance. Don’t count this medium out of the mix. It has a home in the allocation if the retailer and the channel have the right message and offering.
For those retailers who “get it,” I have seen vast improvement. Targeted, more editorial language and approach, speaking from the POV of being on the journey with them.
I do think email will remain an important vehicle for at least the next 5 years. Consumers are far more tolerant of receiving those emails they have subscribed to. Perhaps they will stumble on a great deal or the perfect gift they had not thought about. Yeah, it’s worth taking the minute every now and then to read or just preview the message before deleting.
But retailers, know that today’s consumer does not want to be SOLD to! They do not want to be buried in email and they really believe that “text is for friends,” so stay away unless invited.
And that’s my 2 cents!
I have definitely seen huge improvements with some retail merchants, both large and small. Some of the best innovations are coming from retailers. Merchants need to leverage some of the tools available in the market today to gain deep insights in their target audience and help avoid annoying emails to shoppers.
The bigger question is, “Where is e-mail itself headed in the next 3 to 5 years?” I find it hard to believe that anyone could effectively predict that future.
Email is like any other form of marketing and advertising. If the consumer wants to change channels on their TV when the commercials come on, they do. If they want to delete an email, they do. The key is to target the email marketing to the right consumer—one who has expressed or proved to have interest. Don’t expect 100 percent open rates. That’s a dream. Even 20 percent is considered amazing. Give value versus blatant marketing and you might have a better chance at grabbing the consumer. It doesn’t matter if email is more or less important. The magic is in the mix of media. Email is an inexpensive medium that with even a small return can yield good results.