Drum roll…..According to research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing returned $43.62 for every dollar invested in 2009, and it may surprise you that this trend has changed very little since then.
This highest yielding ROI medium also allows you to communicate directly with your top prospects. And the icing on the email marketing cake? According to the ForeSee Results 2010 on the effectiveness of social media, promotional emails are the second biggest influence on retail website visits, second only to the actual pre-awareness of the brand. Well ahead of social media. Today, savvy businesses consider email marketing to be the best channel among all online technologies.
Anyone who knows me well knows I am a big fan of social media, but in most cases, it should not be the cornerstone of your marketing. So perhaps you currently don’t have an email marketing program live or you do or it just hasn’t quite hit it’s potential yet. Or maybe you thought you could avoid it all together and just send a few tweets instead? It is certainly time to reassess.
THE PLUG – This is why I thought it is important to write the very candid book to help you - Out Now “Effective Email Marketing Guide.“
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Here are some raw facts about email marketing I thought you might find interesting….
- 94% of all online adults use email (See Email Stats ).
- 73% of all online 12 – 17 years olds use email too (Source as above).
- Promotional emails were found to be the second biggest influence on retail website visits. It was only second to the awareness of the brand (Source) ZSPYJYJTKDNZ.
- On average, every dollar spent on email marketing returned $43.62. Thus outperforming all the other direct marketing channels examined.
- 2 x as many Christmas shoppers reported email promotions as the biggest influence on their decision to visit a website – rather than social media.
Is it time to revisit your email marketing strategy?
Changes in consumer behavior have been the main driver for 80% of Marketers looking to increase spending in digital and social media this year, compared to 2010. The results of a survey conducted by AnswersLab have been published in the Society of Digital Agencies 2011 Digital Marketing Outlook report. It gives us a valuable insight into the marriage between marketing and technology in the future. For example:
In which of the following, if any, does your organisation plan to invest in 2011?
Key findings:
- 80% of marketers plan to increase the volume of digital projects in 2011
- 76% of the marketers plan to invest in Facebook & 69% in Twitter
- Overall, 95% of respondents plan to use some form of social media in 2011
- 67% of marketers are increasing investment on Unpaid/Earned Media
- Just 14% of all marketers surveyed plan to increase investment in paid traditional media
While these statistics were taken from a global sample, the last point is reflected in the outlook in the latest IBISWorld Report on advertising services in Australia for the next 4-5 year. Advertising services industry will have to reinvent its services to be more in line with increasing media fragmentation.
The survey respondents were split roughly evenly between the three target groups: agencies, brand marketers, and technologists from around the globe but mostly from North America.