BY Kathy Crosett
Email continues to generate significant ROI of $36 for every dollar invested. That’s because consumers engage with email. An open rate of 20% to 30% is common and a CTR of between 3% and 5% is typical. Should your accounts be doing anything different with their email marketing. Litmus, an industry service provider, recently studied email marketing campaigns produced by their clients. Their findings can help you guide your accounts.
Email Marketing Challenges
While email marketing campaigns deliver results for businesses, there’s room for improvement. Around 20% of businesses want to improve engagement, and they also want better ways to measure their ROI. They’ll need to act on operational issues that are reducing their email campaign effectiveness. Specifically, 25% of businesses have the goal of improving their benchmark open rates, while 19% seek to produce quality content more efficiently.
Analysts believe one factor limiting email effectiveness is budget. Around 22% of businesses allocate less than 5% of their marketing budget to email. However, 30% of businesses spend 15% of their marketing budget on email. It’s likely no coincidence that these are the same businesses that report 30% to 40% open rates on their email communications.
Just throwing money at email marketing won’t ensure that your accounts improve their outcomes. Let’s review a few other factors.
Message Type
Outcomes, to some extent, are influenced by the types of email sent. The most prevalent email messages sent by B2B operators, 65%, are customer-engagement oriented. For B2C operators, 65%, the top email messages sent are promotional.
Personalization
Litmus analysts note that the more money an account spends on email marketing, the more likely they are to personalize the messages. Effectiveness of personalization varies as shown below:
- By demographics 25%
- By dynamic content linked to individual preferences 21%
- By personalized subject line based on recipient data 21%
- By location 18%
- By behavior, such as browsing history 15%
Content
Your accounts face intense competition to attract consumer attention with their email marketing campaigns. They understand this fact, and they prize superior content creation skills. If you’re selling email marketing services, emphasize these skills to win more business.
The typical in-house email creation team may consume up to 25% of the marketing department’s staff time. The team may include copywriters and email design specialists.
Not all businesses can afford to hire specialists. Around 20% hire outside agencies, which is great news if you are selling these services.
But they are speeding up the process by using AI tools. Instead of taking two weeks to create a campaign, in-house teams now need only a few days.
Interaction
In addition to developing outstanding creative content, your accounts can increase engagement by including interactive elements in their emails. These aspects of an email marketing campaign invite consumers to linger and engage. But which elements work best? Here's what the Litmus analysts point to:
- Interactive buttons with a call to action 35%
- Interactive forms 14%
- Surveys, polls, quizzes 13%
- Countdown timers 12%
Frequency
One of your accounts’ biggest objectives will be determining how often to send out email messages. 29% send a message either weekly or several times weekly. Around 15% send out a daily message while 12% opt for a monthly schedule.
The Impact of AI
If your accounts are managing their own email marketing campaigns, you can offer to help them work more efficiently by using AI. Surveyed businesses explain that AI will improve their email marketing process in the following ways:
- Content generation 26%
- Analyze campaign performance 18%
- Improve personalization 17%
Summary
Remind your accounts that 24% of U.S. adults will take advantage birthday rewards and special offers they receive via email. This information and new ideas about checklists to review for your account’s email marketing campaigns are available with a subscription to AdMall. Don't let them miss out on the best ways to boost their ROI.
