use of email 2013 email marketing insight 2013 -...

A research project into Irish marketers’

use of email 2013

A research project into Irish marketers’ use of email

Email Marketing Insight

2013

Introduction 2

Foreword by Tom Trainor 2Introduction by Marie Moynihan 3Executive summary 4 Section 1 – About the Organisations 5

About the organisation 5Budgets allocated to email 8Expected change in expenditure 8Where email budgets will come from 9 Section 2 – Use of Email by Irish Marketers 10

Importance of email in the marketing strategy 10What marketers use email for 10Email systems marketers are using 11Frequency of email campaigns 12Email database sizes 12Tactics used to grow subscriber lists 13

Section 3 – Email Benchmarks 14

Email metrics being tracked 14Average open rates 15Average click-through rates 15Use of personalisation in email marketing 16

Section 4 – Social Media and Email Marketing 17

Methods of social media integration 17Effectiveness of social media integration 18

Section 5 - Future Perceptions of Email Marketing 19

Future challenges facing email marketing 19Future opportunities facing email marketing 20

Section 6 - Thank You 21

Thank You 21

Contents

1


use of email 2013

Introduction

2


use of email 2013

Foreword by Tom Trainor

For the fifth year the Marketing Institute, in partnership with Newsweaver, has produced a significant report on Email Marketing. At the Institute we focus on delivering insights and expert content to our members that promotes and supports marketing as a key strategic business tool.

The report is an important benchmark and gives valuable insights to marketers in planning and creating their email campaigns. The survey represents the views of business professionals over a cross section of industry type and sizes and includes those working in both B2B and B2C sectors. Email continues to be an indispensable channel for Irish marketers, enabling them to sustain relationships with their core audiences.

Email remains a strong, trustworthy channel for marketers to engage with their customers, build brand awareness and increase website traffic. As marketers see the ROI in their email marketing campaigns their email marketing has expanded to include both customer retention and lead nurturing.

This year’s results show a strong move to integration of email and social media. It reflects the position of Irish marketers adopting the fast paced digital changes and a greater awareness of the value of measurement.

Email marketing has evolved and developed to become more sophisticated as Irish marketers include personalisation, segmentation and content targeting in their email campaigns. The impact of the rise in mobile is reflected with over half of the respondents’ still viewing mobile optimisation as an opportunity.

Irish marketers are reacting to the rapid changes in device technology and email marketing offers exciting challenges and opportunities to businesses in the future.

Tom TrainorChief ExecutiveThe Marketing Institute

Introduction

3


use of email 2013

Introduction by Marie Moynihan

We are delighted to work once again with the Marketing Institute on the fifth annual Email Marketing Insight report.

The report will be of interest to marketers who’d like to gain insight into the emerging trends and attitudes towards email marketing in Ireland.

Once again, email marketing is an essential channel within the marketing mix. What we are seeing is a continued move from very basic email marketing tools to more sophisticated cloud-based software that can take advantage of advances in digital marketing such as the embedding of videos. It is no surprise that the result of this is a notable increase in the uptake in implementation of advanced email marketing techniques, including personalisation beyond the use of name and salutation. More complex segmentation of databases is also a real growth area within organisations as marketers see the increased ROI in any segmentation.

This year social integration into email can be considered a given with marketers –the most common activity being driving subscribers to social channels. Mobile optimisation trends very strongly this year, with fifty-five per cent seeing it as an opportunity they must address in the next twelve months. As part of the growing trend towards personalisation and segmentation, it is no surprise to see that over sixty-two per cent say that targeted content holds the biggest opportunity for email success in 2014.

Marie MoynihanMarketing ManagerNewsweaver

Introduction

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use of email 2013

Executive SummaryIn line with 2012, the popularity of email remains strong amongst marketers with over 80% describing email as either im-portant or very important component of their overall marketing strategy. This reaffirms last year’s results, which at the time indicated a significant jump in the importance of email within the marketing mix.

The cornerstone of any successful business is building brand awareness and maintaining customer relationships. With the majority of respondents citing email as a vital tool for maintaining these relationships, there is continued faith and trust in the power of the inbox.

It is apparent that there are challenges for marketers in their use of email with swamped inboxes and spam eroding trust in email; however research is showing these issues are less prevalent among respondents that use advanced web based email tools for their sends. It is also apparent that companies with larger marketing departments and larger databases are less likely to use personalisation in their emails which might point to the challenges that exist in maintaining customer records.

Furthermore, we have seen a significant rise in the use of targeted content in emails which presents opportunities for marketers, and with the ever-increasing penetration of mobile and tablet devices, unsurprisingly marketers have indicated ‘mobile email’ as another opportunity for success in the future.

• Customers use email marketing primarily for building brand awareness, maintaining customer relations and increasing website traffic.

• The number of companies who have 10+ full time marketing personnel has increased by 12% in 2013.

• Social integration is now an established part of email marketing with Facebook and Linkedin the most effective networks being integrated.

• There is an increase in the respondents using Cloud-based email marketing software and a decrease in the use of existing desktop solutions for email marketing.

• There has been an increase in the use of dynamic content for personalisation in 2013.

Highlights:• Open rates and Click-through rates remain the

most popular metrics tracked.

• 62% of respondents felt that targeted content holds the biggest opportunity for email success in 2014. Mobile optimisation (55%) is still seen as an opportunity.

About the Organisations

5


use of email 2013

About the Research

This is the fifth year of the survey which aims to identify trends and behaviours in the use of email marketing in Ireland. The research was conducted through an online survey sent to over 3000 marketers.

340 business professionals completed this year’s survey ranging from sales and marketing executives to company CEOs and owners of small, medium and large organisations. A cross section of industry type and sizes are represented and include those working in both B2B and B2C sectors.

What is your job title?Q

32%20%

17%

14% 9%8%

Other

Marketing Manager

Marketing Director

CEO/ Business Owner

Marketing Executive

Sales Manager

Marketing Managers make up the majority of the survey participants, followed by Marketing Director and CEO/Business Owner.


6


use of email 2013

0.0% 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0%

Marketing/Media/Publishing/Advertising

Banking/Finance/Insurance

IT/Telecommunications

Education/Training

Consulting

Pharmaceutical/Medical/Healthcare

Retail

Transportation/Travel

Manufacturing

Hospitality

Arts/Entertainment/Recreation

Wholesale/distribution

Non profit/Trade association

Legal

Government

Energy

Construction

Agriculture/Forestry/Fishing

Utilities

Real Estate

20%

17%

12%

11%

5%

5%

4%

3%

3%

3%

3%

2%

2%

2%

2%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

Which industry sector is your organisation in? Q

Marketing/Media/Publishing/Advertising make up the majority of respondents followed by Banking/Finance/Insurance and IT/Telecomms which remains consistent from previous years.


7


use of email 2013

0.0% 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0% 25.0% 30.0% 35.0%

don't know

10+ full-time people

5-10 full-time people

2-4 full-time people

1 full-time person

1 part-time person

3%

21%

12%

31%

20%

13%

Which of the following best describes your organisation’s marketing audience? Q

How many marketing personnel are there in your organisation? QIn order to assess the scale of organisations participating in this year’s survey, we asked respondents to indicate how many marketing staff are employed in their business.

In comparison to 2012 there was a significant increase (12%) in the number of companies with 10+ full time personnel, an increase in 2-4 full time (4%) and 5-10 full time personnel (1%)

This highlights the continuous growing positive trend in employment figures year on year.

40%

36%

24%

B2B and B2C

B2B

B2C

40% operate in a B2B and B2C market, 36% in a B2B market and 24% in a B2C market.


8


use of email 2013

What percentage of your marketing budget do you allocate to email marketing?

Q

Don't know

50%+

20-50%

10-20%

5-10%

0-5%

18%

2%

6%

11%

23%

41%

As with 2012 the majority of respondents spend less than 5% on email marketing. It is encouraging to see that 10-20% has increased by 2% from 2012; this may explain the increase in building brand awareness as a use for email marketing campaigns.

How do you expect your organisation’s expenditure on email to change in the next 12 months?

Q

44%

39%

13%5%

Stay the same

Increase

Don’t know

Decrease

83% of respondents state that their budgets will increase or stay the same this year. Marketers are seeing the ROI in their email marketing campaigns. As email marketing expands to include both customer retention and lead nurturing, marketers are increasing budget to run more sophisticated campaigns around personalisation, segmentation and content targeting.


9


use of email 2013

Where do you expect this increase in budget to come from? Q

Of those who state that their budget will increase, 37% say it will come from New budget allocation and 18% say it will come from Direct Mail budget. Upon cross analysis between B2B and B2C companies it is interesting to note that B2B state New budget as their source and B2C state Direct Mail budget.

0.0% 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0% 25.0% 30.0% 35.0% 40.0%

New budget

Direct mail budget

Don't know

Print/press advertising budget

Social Media budget

Field marketing budget

Telemarketing budget

TV/radio/cinema budget

SMS/Mobile budget

37%

18%

15%

13%

11%

3%

2%

2%

1%

Use of Email by Irish Marketers

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use of email 2013

How important is email as part of your overall marketing strategy? Q

The overwhelming majority of respondents 80% state that email continues to be very important (36%) or an important (44%) part of their marketing strategy.

0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0%

Not important

Not sure

Important

Very important

9%

11%

44%

36%

Which of the following do you use email marketing for within your organisation? Q

There is a slight shift in the use of email marketing from customer retention to building brand awareness; this indicates more of an emphasis on lead generation this year. We added the option of driving activity to social channels in this year’s survey and saw that 69% are connecting their social media accounts into their email marketing campaigns.

0.0% 20.0% 40.0% 60.0% 80.0% 100.0%

Communicating with employees & stakeholders

Generating new sales leads

Customer retention

Driving offline sales

Driving direct online sales

Driving activity to social channels

Increasing website traffic

Building brand awareness

Always Sometimes Never

37%

35%

46%

37%

25%

20%

38%

47%

38%

46%

40%

40%

29%

49%

46%

40%

25%

19%

14%

23%

46%

31%

16%

13%


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use of email 2013

What email marketing solution are you currently using? QWe are seeing that there is an absolute move to Cloud-based email marketing software (41%). There is also a year on year decrease in desktop solutions as marketers are recognising the limitations of the solution they have and recognise the advanced technology that Cloud-based software offers such as personalisation, measurement and targeted content.

0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0%

Don't know

Outsourced to an agency

In-house custom built system

Cloud-based email marketing software

Existing desktop solution (Outlook, Lotus Notes etc)

8%

12%

15%

41%

24%


12


use of email 2013

On average, how often do you conduct email marketing campaigns? Q

Monthly (44%) and Weekly (22%) are the most popular frequency of send.

0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0%

Once a year

Twice a year

Quarterly

Monthly

Weekly

Daily

6%

7%

18%

44%

22%

3%

What is the approximate size of your email database? Q

0

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

Don't know250k+100-250k25-100k 5-25k <5k

As with 2012 survey the majority of respondents have a database of less than 5000 email addresses.


13


use of email 2013

How effective do you find these tactics in growing your email subscriber mailing list?

QWhat’s interesting here is the most used tactics are not always the most effective. No matter what tactic you’re using the first step should be to create a powerful sign up form that incites subscribes. Then ensure the form is on the website, in the newsletter and on social media. From there, marketers are in a good position to test incentives and competitions.

0.0% 20.0% 40.0% 60.0% 80.0% 100.0%

List rental

Partnership programs

Competitions

Paid search

Incentive to forward to a friend

Facebook registration

Call-to-actions at online events

Registration during purchase

Call-to-actions at offline events

Links on social platforms

Website registration

Excellent Good Fair Poor

1%

11%

25%

11%

5%

7%

11%

29%

9%

7%

17%

16%

31%

29%

28%

22%

27%

45%

37%

40%

46%

43%

28%

33%

25%

23%

46%

27%

33%

21%

36%

36%

33%

55%

26%

22%

39%

28%

39%

12%

13%

15%

11%

8%

Email Benchmarks

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use of email 2013

0.0% 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0% 25.0% 30.0% 35.0%

Click-through rate

Open rate

Conversion rate

Click-to-open rate

Social activity

Delivery rate

Unsubscribe rate

33%

31%

22%

7%

4%

2%

1%

What email metrics do you regularly track? Q

Click-through rates (72%) and open rates (69%) are the top tracked metrics. Less people Don’t Know this year which indicates that there is an increase in the correct software being used.

0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% 60.0% 70.0% 80.0%

Don't know

Click-through rate

Open rate

Unsubscribe rate

Bounce rate

Conversion rate

Delivery rate

Click-to-open rate

Social activity

13%

78%

77%

58%

50%

41%

40%

34%

18%

What do you view as the most important metric that you measure?

QOpen & Click-through rates are still the most important metrics, it is very positive to see an increase in conversion rates to track as we are now looking at ROI across the entire campaign.

Email Benchmarks

15


use of email 2013

On average, what overall open rates do you get from your mailings? Q

Irish Marketers have become more effective with measuring their email marketing campaigns.

0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% 60.0%

51+%

41-50%

31-40%

21-30%

11-20%

0-10%

5%

24%

26%

25%

11%

9%

Top Tip from Newsweaver


Subject lines can play a big part on your open rate.

Use A/B Split testing to test different subject lines on sample users. The subject line which gets the most opens will be sent to the rest of your list.

The ‘From’ field can have an enormous impact on your open rate.

You should decide whether your email should come from your brand, your company, or the name of an individual (e.g. an Account Manager).

On average, what overall click-through rates do you get from your mailings? Q

0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0%

21%+

16-20%

11-15%

6-10%

3-5%

0-2%

12%

13%

20%

17%

26%

12%

Email Benchmarks

16


use of email 2013

On average, what level of personalisation do you use in your email marketing?

QThere was an increase of 15% in the number of respondents who personalise by targeted content for specific users; this is most likely the reason for the decrease in personalising by name (-11%) and those who do not personalise at all (-4%).

32%26%

23%12%

7%

Don’t know

Name only

More than name

Targeted content for specific users

No personalisation

Please indicate what area you use for personalisation?QThe easiest personalisation elements; name (69%) salutation (49%) subject line (48%) and company name (43%) are the most popular areas of personalisation. What is surprising and encouraging to see is that more sophisticated areas such as content (38%) is seeing an increase in use.

0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% 60.0% 70.0% 80.0%

Name

Salutation

Subject line

Company name

From address

Content

Product and services

Relationship

Welcome message

Professional title/role

Personal or company address

Custom data fields

Subscriber preferences

Demographic

Geolocation

Behaviour

69%

49%

48%

43%

39%

38%35%

23%

21%

20%

14%

13%

9%

9%

6%

4%

Social Media and Email Marketing

17


use of email 2013

How do you integrate social media in to your emails? QIn 2012 there was a 60/40 split between the respondents that use social media in their email marketing campaigns and those who don’t – this year a staggering 91% of respondents are using social media. With the main networks unsurprisingly being Facebook (59%) Twitter (58%) and Linkedin (47%).

0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% 60.0%

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

YouTube

Do not use social media

Google+

Like feature

Comment feature

+1 feature 2%

6%

10%

13%

20%

20%

47%

58%

59%

Social Media and Email Marketing

18


use of email 2013

What do you find to be the most effective?QMirroring how marketers integrate social media in their email marketing campaigns, Facebook (40%) Linkedin (35%) and Twitter (17%) are deemed the most effective respectively.

Facebook

LinkedIn

Twitter

YouTube

Google+

Like feature

40%

35%

17%

5%

2%

1%

0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0%

Twitter

LinkedIn

Facebook

B2B B2C

13%

45%

8%

4%

5%

32%

On cross analysis B2C companies find Facebook most effective while B2B find Linkedin to be.

Future Perceptions of Email Marketing

19


use of email 2013

What do you perceive to be the biggest challenges for email marketing in 2013/2014?

QAs with 2012 swamped inboxes is perceived as the biggest challenge (64%). Spam email (41%) and the unwillingness to opt-in (39%) are two other prominent challenges. The DMA 2013 Email Tracking Report finds that while marketers worry about inbox clutter and spam, and keeping up with advances in web-based filter technology such as Gmail tabs, what actually motivates people to open emails hasn’t changed. If they trust a brand and it consistently gives them value, they will find your content or make that purchase.

Recipients' inboxes are swamped and all email suffers

Spam is eroding trust in email

Unwillingness of people to opt-in to new email lists is increasing

It is difficult to do effective email creative due to image blocking

Email doesn't get the attention/budget it deserves

A lack of customer data is holding back email effectiveness

Deliverability is becoming more difficult

There is a lack of accountability/measurement 9%

19%

19%

23%

25%

39%

41%

64%

Future Perceptions of Email Marketing

20


use of email 2013

What do you perceive as the biggest opportunities for email success in 2013/2014?

QThe decrease in integrating social networks as an opportunity mirrors the increase in respondents implementing it in their email marketing campaigns. The two main opportunities are Targeted content (62%) and Mobile optimisation (55%) It is encouraging to see Targeted content as an opportunity as it gives us an insight into Marketers becoming increasingly more sophisticated in the email marketing campaigns. Rather than a one size fits all content they are concentrating on sending more timely and relevant content and focusing on standing out in the inbox.The strong presence of mobile optimization as an opportunity suggests that it is still not being utilized. Mobile email is definitely a growing trend. But most consumers are still viewing emails on a variety of devices, depending where they are when receiving the emails.

Targeted content

Mobile optimisation

Use of video

Integration with social networks

Use of infographics

Triggered emails

A/B split testing 16%

20%

23%

31%

33%

55%

62%


Before rushing into discussions on mobile design matters Marketers should start measuring how subscribers on their mailing list are consuming their emails. While going through this process, they should ensure emails they are currently sending render well on the most commonly used desktops, tablets and smart phones.

Thank You

21


use of email 2013

Newsweaver in conjunction with the Marketing Institute would like to thank everyone who participated in this year’s Email Marketing Insight Report. If you have any questions about the report, please contact:

Newsweaver on email: [email protected] Marketing Institute on email: [email protected]

Based in Ireland Newsweaver is an award-winning email communications software provider that helps over 4,000 users in 96 countries worldwide deliver relevant, targeted and engaging communications. Newsweaver clients range from large multinationals and government agencies to SMEs, charities and associations across the globe, and include Saudi Aramco, Shell, Zurich Insurance, Royal Mail, Aon Hewitt, Aviva, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), KBC Bank, Institute of Chartered Accountants, Sky, G4S and ACCA.

The Marketing Institute is the professional body for Ireland’s marketing people, in operation for over 50 years, and it envisions a professional marketing community that is qualified, effective and valued. With a mission to strengthen the profession of marketing in Ireland, the Institute aims to promote, support and elevate marketing as a key strategic business tool. It does this in three ways: by (1) delivering insights and expert content; (2) building the community of marketers; and (3) giving a voice to the profession. Content, Community and Voice are the three themes that underpin all Institute activities. Membership allows our community of marketing professionals to come together and network with like-minded individuals and provide them with expert content with will empower and enable them to develop their careers within the marketing profession. We also offer training solutions, marketing insights and resources and we have access to the best in class experts, reports and publications in the marketing profession.

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