Adestra

Marketers are using social media to enhance their email marketing campaigns rather than to replace them, according to new research published by Econsultancy and Adestra today.

The fourth annual Email Marketing Industry Census found that more than a third of companies (37%) are using email to encourage the sharing of content on social networks, and just under a third of companies (31%) say they are planning to do this.

A fifth of companies (21%) are using email to promote customer ratings and reviews, while a further 26% have plans to do this. The research also found that 28% of companies are using video content in their emails, as marketers increasingly use email to build customer engagement.

The 2010 research, based on a survey of almost 900 digital marketers carried out in January and February 2010, found that email marketing now accounts for 17% of digital marketing budgets compared to 14% in 2009.

Increased investment can be attributed to the fact that the vast majority of responding companies (75%) rate email as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ for return on investment.

Henry Hyder-Smith, Managing Director at email service provider Adestra, said: “The explosive impact of social media on email marketing and its significance on this year’s census can’t be ignored. We are delighted to see that email is far from dying in the midst of the social media revolution. And instead of cannibalisation, we are witnessing a solid partnership evolving between the two; email and social media working in harmony to fuel one another.”

Despite the fact that many companies are becoming more sophisticated with their email marketing, and integrating this channel with other activities, there remains concern that many marketers are still not following basic best practice, the research has found.

Too many organisations are still not paying sufficient attention to the quality of their lists and the importance of relevant email.
The research, sponsored by Adestra for the fourth year running, found that:

• Only 56% of companies are using opt-in (43%) or confirmed opt-in (13%) data for their acquisition emails, while only 60% are using opt-in (39%) or confirmed opt-in (21%) data for their retention emails.

• The quality of database is deemed to be the biggest barrier to effective email marketing. This is cited as a problem by 61% of marketers, up from 44% in 2009. But only a third (32%) of company respondents say list / data quality is a top-three priority for 2010.

• The proportion of responding companies have problems reaching recipients’ inboxes has increased from 51% last year to 54%. The percentage of companies who say that deliverability is a barrier to success has increased from 13% in 2009 to 24% in 2010.

Linus Gregoriadis, Research Director at Econsultancy, said: “Companies must take care to focus on the relevance of their email in a world where it is becoming increasingly important for brands to demonstrate value, rather than bombarding people with unwanted messages. Sophisticated segmentation and effective list-cleansing are more important than ever. ”
Other key findings include:

• More than half of companies (54%) are now using a hosted email service as the growth of web-based email applications continues. This percentage compares to 47% last year, a third (33%) of respondents in 2008, and only a quarter (27%) in 2007.

• There has been a significant increase (+5%) in the proportion of companies who say that return on investment (ROI) from email is more than 500%.
• But as witnessed in previous years, there are still too few companies who understand their ROI from email. Thirty-nine per cent of companies still don’t know their ROI from email. More encouragingly, looking at those who can quantify their return from email, there has been an increase in companies who say that they get more than 500% ROI from this channel.

• From a range of email marketing practices, companies are most likely to be carrying out basic segmentation (80%) and regular list-cleansing (58%). The practices respondents are most likely to be planning to carry out are advanced segmentation (42%), content personalisation beyond name (37%) and behavioural targeting based on web activity (34%).

• The integration of email marketing with other sales and marketing activities is an on-going challenge, and there isn’t much evidence of significant improvement in this area since the first Email Census in 2007. Only 17% say that their email marketing is “fully integrated”, the same proportion as last year.

Report URL – Email Marketing Census 2010

Journalists, Please contact Hollie Williams for more info

Adestra and its client RM were presented the top award in the ‘Best use of data’ category and runner-up for the ‘Best limited budget campaign’ at this year’s B2B Marketing Awards, which took place at the Honourable Artillery Company in London last night.

The email service provider received the top accolades for the outstanding results achieved with education company, RM. The brief was to ultimately boost sales revenues for the UK’s leading provider of educational software, computers and services to schools, colleges, and universities.

The campaign intelligently utilised data and response behaviour by adopting upfront analytics to track, segment and target groups accordingly. With a limited budget of only £6,300, the campaign delivered phenomenal results, outstripping the ROI target of 12:1 by over 80%, and delivering over £1.25 million in revenue.

Julie Dixon, Senior Marketing Executive at RM, comments: “This has been the most complex and data driven online campaign we have ever run. Discovering and responding to customers’ individual needs across our 400,000 UK B2B contact database has been a huge undertaking. The customer data was used judiciously to create both the initial strategy and then drive the successful campaign. The level of tracking and data analysis was unprecedented. As a result, the outcome has been astonishing with ROI far exceeding our expectations.”

- Notes to editors -

For further information please contact:

Hollie Williams, Marketing Manager – hw@adestra.com or tel: +44 (0) 1865 24 24 25

About Adestra

Adestra is an industry leading, email marketing company operating in the B2B and B2C markets. The company is industry leading because it provides its clients with their best opportunity for strong sales results. Adestra achieves this through the combination of today’s most effective email marketing tool, MessageFocus, successful strategies to boost deliverability, and the best, most experienced brains in the business to help you turn large numbers of prospects into customers. Our own customers include Tiscali, Dennis Publishing, BBC Worldwide, LloydsTSB and British Red Cross.

About RM

RM is an education company. It works closely with its customers to find the next best thing to help teachers in their teaching and learners in their learning. Founded in Oxford in 1973, RM pioneered the use of technology in education. Since then its range of products and services has continued to expand to meet the needs of schools, colleges and universities. Through the acquisition of a number of companies across the education field RM’s expertise is now much wider than ICT and includes furniture, games and resources. And, if you factor in its offices in the US, India, Dubai and Australia, it has a growing international flavour too.

Emails sent by online marketers can now be automatically updated with the latest offers and news updates posted on any website, saving marketers thousands of pounds in wasted time and effort.

Adestra, a leading email service provider (ESP), has just launched the automated ‘Remote Content Pull’ an on-demand feature for MessageFocus, which streamlines the process of refreshing an email template, so customers can immediately receive relevant information or alerts posted on any website via XML.

The tool improves efficiency and accuracy while reducing the time it takes to produce email copy which includes content already prepared for the web. Content can also be applied conditionally based upon the values in the contact data, allowing powerful up sell and cross sell opportunities.

Some applications of the tool include:

• Newsletters and customer retention emails – pull the latest blog article titles and summaries

• Email Alerts – use your RSS feeds for subject line and interest areas on your site as a quick and easy way to initiate an automated program of email alerts.

• Subscriptions Programme – Automated campaigns which pull in up-to-date product specific and cross sell content

• Recurring Campaigns – ‘birthday’ emails, ‘product of the day’ and other regular email marketing initiatives

For further information please contact:

Hollie Williams – or tel: +44 (0) 1865 24 24 25

Leading email service provider, Adestra, has launched a unique product that enables users to identify the conversion rates of their email marketing campaigns using any web analytics provider they like. The software, designed by Adestra and integrated into the MessageFocus email platform, is the first of its kind that allows its users to gain end-to-end tracking with all providers worldwide.

According to Adestra’s lastest survey on B2B and B2C marketers , identifying the ROI of an email marketing campaign is one of the biggest challenges facing the industry.  However, with the launch of Adestra’s product, accessing complex information on subscribers’ online behaviour has never been easier or cheaper as the process is streamlined.

Integrating web analytics with email marketing allows marketers to look beyond the usual campaign metrics such as open, read and click-through rates.  Marketers can track, for example, the subscribers’ engagement as they navigate through the site, identify landing pages with high exit rates and average times on sites.

This level of tracking will help marketers improve their ROI, as this valuable information is utilised so future campaigns become targeted and relevant. According to Forrester Consulting, integrating web analytics and email can generate nearly four times more revenue and 18 times greater net profits compared to using simple untargeted email campaigns.

Hollie Williams, Marketing Manager

Tracking conversion rates of email marketing campaigns and improving return on investment (ROI) are the main challenges marketers face this year, reveals Adestra, UK’s leading email service provider (ESP).

Adestra’s latest survey of B2B and B2C marketers reveals that 60% feel that identifying how well their email marketing campaign is working is the biggest challenge for 2009, with 55% believing that improving their ROI in this current climate is most difficult.

Henry Hyder-Smith, Managing Director of Adestra, comments: “Scrutiny of marketing campaigns has been, quite rightly, heightened during this recession, as every pound invested has to be justified. As a result, more marketers are monitoring their email marketing campaign results. However, they  should be reassured that more advanced and sophisticated methods to track online behaviour are now available. Email professionals may be used to monitoring open rates, read rates and click-through rates, but top tier ESPs can now help them accurately identify website traffic referred by their email campaign. This level of tracking will help marketers improve their ROI, as this valuable information is utilised and future campaigns become targeted and relevant.”

In addition, 52% of marketers believe that growing their email contact database is one of their greatest challenges.

Henry Hyder-Smith continues: “The quality of your database is fundamental to any successful campaign and it is important to review your entire data management strategy at all stages, not only at the point of acquisition. Marketers should segment data for more profitable targeted campaigns, clean and update their databases regularly and of course monitor email responses, such as bounce-backs. We recognise that this is a challenge. At Adestra, we offer expertise to not only grow your database but ensure data quality is maintained. If this is carried out properly the desired improved ROI will follow.”

Although email marketing remains one of the most cost effective marketing medium, thousands of pounds are still being lost every year in the UK online retailing sector due to failed delivery of emails.
According to our latest annual Email Census, on average 10% of email marketing budgets are still being wasted because of failed delivery. However, this is of course only an average, and whilst some marketers have excellent deliverability rates, others are experiencing extremely high levels of waste, reaching well over a quarter of their budget.

This has to be addressed. At Adestra, we believe that improving deliverability rates is fundamental to boosting companies’ bottom line and our commitment to deliverability has saved online retailers thousands of pounds. For example, as a direct result of our service, leading online gifts and gadgets retailer, I Want One Of Those (IWOOT), has seen its return on investment for email marketing soar, as its deliverability rates have increased by over 50%.

So how can marketers improve their investment in email marketing?

Establishing and then protecting your reputation is fundamental to improving your deliverability success rate. It is crucial that email marketers work to ensure complaints are kept to an absolute minimum, to avoid being blocked. It is surprisingly easy to be consigned to the blacklist. The level of complaint does not need to be substantial. (more…)

Henry Hyder-Smith comments

Whether you believe the UK is heading for a deep and long recession, or think that we starting to see the glimmer of a recovery, what is certain is the devastating impact this difficult economic climate is having on many industries, and the digital marketing industry has not emerged unscathed. However, for an industry that is still in its infancy, email marketing is continuing to grow and bucking the trend. Read more here

Online retailing businesses are benefiting from using Email Service Provider (ESP), Adestra, to deliver unsurpassed deliverability rates and outstanding ROI for their marketing campaigns.

Leading online gifts and gadgets retailer, I Want One Of Those (IWOOT), has seen its return on investment for email marketing soar, as its deliverability rates have increased by over 50% since the company instructed Adestra two months ago.

Julian Moskov, Online Marketing Manager at IWOOT, comments:

“We joined forces with Adestra this Spring in a bid to achieve ambitious branding and sales objectives through customer communications. Results have been quick to come already, with indicators like deliverability increasing immediately. Adestra is proving to be a robust and sophisticated platform on which we can build increasingly effective campaigns. The provided arsenal of tools, including reporting, segmentation and eCommerce tools, together with strategic advice from the team, is driving impressive ROI for our email channel.”

Henry Hyder-Smith, Managing Director at Adestra, comments:

“We are delighted to be working alongside dynamic online brands such as IWOOT. Adestra offers the best combination of email technology and marketing expertise, by providing high quality and targeted campaigns to deliver unrivalled ROI. It is great that IWOOT has witnessed such significant improvements in ROI so quickly, with deliverability rates improving substantially.”

Adestra provides comprehensive and detailed analysis on email deliverability, as it is the only European headquartered ESP that has partnered with Return Path, the world’s leading email deliverability service provider, to ensure all outbound emails are fully seeded. This will determine whether the messages for over 80 worldwide webmail and email software platforms have reached the inbox, bulk folder or are being blocked outright.

Adestra has experienced continued growth this year, as companies across all sectors are turning to its comprehensive and strategic email marketing services and taking advantage of the excellent ROI.

Their latest client wins include: Publishing specialist, Newsquest; The world’s largest bookshop, Foyles; GMTV; PPA, the association for publishers and providers of media in the UK; Heals, luxury interior design store; The Royal Academy of Arts; The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA); Chemistry digital, a digital marketing agency and Media 10, a publishing and events company.

We’re delighted to announce that Adestra and client Dennis Publishing were highly commended for the Diamond award at the IDM BPA’s. The Diamonds, which recognise the strategic contribution made by the winning programmes to overall business performance were awarded last Thursday.

More info here

Dennis Publishing

We are delighted to announce that Adestra and client Dennis Publishing have been shortlisted for two IDM Business Performance Awards:-

•    IDM BPA Diamond 2009

•    Best use of email marketing

http://www.bpa.theidm.com/ for more info.