THE VALUE OF EMAIL, ACCORDING TO THE DATA
According to a study Adestra/eConsultancy released earlier in the year—Email Marketing Industry Census 2016—email once again gets the highest marks for ROI, ahead even of marketing standbys like SEO and SEM. Seventy-three percent of the more than 1,100 respondents reported email delivers ‘excellent to good’ ROI, up six percentage points from 2015 responses to the same question.
Those figures aren’t shocking, but here’s some that are: Although email accounts for 23 percent of total sales, on average, brands only spend 15 percent of their marketing budget on email. This discrepancy clearly highlights some missed opportunities. Not only does email deliver revenue, it’s likely the preferred mode of communication for most, if not all, of your customers. Do you know anyone who doesn’t check email multiple times throughout the course of any given day? I don’t.
WHY DOES EMAIL DELIVER SUCH HIGH ROI?
We can start to answer that question by considering the habits of those marketers who reported that impressive ROI in the first place: They use analytics that allow them to create personalized experiences for email recipients—far beyond auto-filling first names. Most businesses said they have a ‘basic’ approach to segmentation and personalization (see Figure 1), while a third reported using advanced segmentation strategies—up a whopping 21 percent from 2015 data. We know competing on customer experience is your best bet in today’s tech-saturated marketplace, and personalization through email is a big first step.
This isn’t a state secret, either. Brands know what they need to do. Sixty-one percent of companies said they wanted to improve their approach to personalization, and 56 percent said they were dissatisfied with the current status quo.
Figure 1. Source: Email Marketing Industry Census 2016
MARKETING TO MILLENNIALS? READ THIS.
Email isn’t just for the your Boomer target audience reading emails from their desktops; it’s also for your Millennial customer base with their omnipresent mobile devices in hand, expecting engagement across multiple touchpoints. Just because they’re often active on social and value influencer marketing doesn’t mean email is a lost cause. In fact, the opposite is true, and recent data from Bluecore proves it. The company reports 53 percent of Millennials who use Gmail check the promotions tab daily.
And remember that long talk we just had about the value of personalization in terms of ROI and—ultimately—conversion? An impressive 64 percent of Millennials said they felt email was the most personal marketing channel, and giving Millennial consumers what they want is good for business.
WHAT’S NEXT?
So, what should your 2017 marketing budget look like? Every business is different, but I think we can agree that no matter what your business, email marketing should be up there on your priority list. But if you’re going to do email, if it’s ROI you seek, you’ve got to make sure you do it right. Connect your email marketing to a CRM, which will allow you to not only find your next customers, but help you keep the ones you already have. A good CRM will allow you to score leads, create the right messages for the right customers at the right time, and then measure the effectiveness of your campaigns. And that? That’s going to deliver for you.
Watch the recording of our SAP webinar, All Cylinders Go: How to Supercharge Your Marketing to Drive Growth and Profitability. I share valuable tips on how to supercharge your marketing in 2017 and beyond and provide insights that you can put immediately to use in your business. Watch here.
This article is written as part of a series of posts and brought to you in part by the team at SAP Digital. If you’re in the market for a CRM system or other software and services to power your business, visit the SAP Store.
This article was first published on SAP Digital.