A new report on email marketing from ClickZ with Adestra reveals adjustments to email user habits
Email marketing is still a powerful medium, even though some pundits have been talking about its decline for years.
A new report from ClickZ with Adestra details the value of email marketing today.
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A new report from ClickZ with Adestra, named Email and the Age of First-Person Marketing, details the value of email marketing and the future of the medium.
Why is email marketing still so relevant today? It starts with the ROI. “One of the strongest arguments in favor of email is its ROI, which remains the highest of any direct marketing channel. The Direct Marketing Association’s 2015 Response Rate Report found that email campaigns conducted with house lists achieved an ROI of 30% to 32%, compared with 15% to 17% from social media, and 18% to 20% for direct mail using house lists. ”
Another contributing factor to success behind email marketing is the fact that people are engaging through their portable devices in addition to their computers. “According to the Consumer Digital Usage and Behavior Study, conducted by Adestra, 84% of smartphone users use their phone to send and receive personal email, and 34% use it for business email. For 24% of smartphone users, email is the first thing they check on their phone when waking up in the morning.”
Email service providers are offering more because of technological advances
Technology on both sides is helping to keep email popular amongst marketers and users alike. And more email service providers offer technology that can help email marketers segment, target, and design throughout multiple devices more easily. “A true best-of-breed email service provider needs features such as detailed, granular reporting; responsive templates that make it easy to build mobile-adapted messages; integration with databases for segmentation, automation and triggering; and of course, a responsive customer service team in case something goes wrong.”
Email is not just for older generations
Email is a medium being used by throughout generations, and this includes young consumers. “There’s a lot marketers can learn from the younger generations’ attitude to email. One of the biggest surprises that came out of Adestra’s 2016 survey was about the teens. Seventy-three per cent of respondents aged 14 to 18 said that email is a part of their everyday lives, with 68% preferring email over texting and apps as a method of receiving commercial messages. Teens aren’t dismissing email because they think it isn’t cool anymore. In fact, it could be said that they’re better at looking at the channel than a lot of marketers”
What do email recipients like and dislike about email marketing
Saving money is a big reason email recipients like the medium for promotions. ClickZ notes, “In Adestra’s survey, receiving discounts emerged as most important reason for signing up to receive email from businesses, and this was the case across all age ranges (85.7% of 14 to 18s selected this, compared with 84.8% of 19 to 34s, and 84.2% of 56 to 67s).”
There are multiple reasons as to why email recipients choose to unsubscribe from email promotions. “According to this year’s survey, 34.9% would like to see fewer emails than they’re currently receiving. And consumers aren’t afraid to vote with their feet – undesired emails will result in an unsubscribe action nearly three-quarters (73%) of the time. What’s more, if consumers are confronted by an email that doesn’t look good, they’ll most likely delete it (64.6% of 14 to 18s said this, compared with 69.0% of 19 to 34s, and 88.2% of 56 to 67s).”
We of course believe that there’s a lot of bad email floating around online, and if you’re publishing great content, especially free daily content and sharing it with your email subscribers, they will stay subscribed. In fact, our data shows that it’s daily email newsletters have much higher email retention rates than less consistent emails.
Could your email marketing strategy use attention? Set up a time to chat with us about how to build a successful subscription website that will help you increase your audience, revenue and profits.
