Adestra

Econsultancy and Adestra annual email marketing census has just been launched,  as always it will cover email marketing topics such as  Use of email services, Email marketing budgets,  ROI and effectiveness, Email Integration and Deliverability.

To take part all you will have to do is fill in the Email marketing Census 2010 survey, at the end of the survey you will also get the chance to fill in your details to get your own free copy (worth £150).

Adestra will hold a breakfast briefing in March where we will discuss the latest hot topics and best practice for email marketing for 2010, if you are interesting in taking part of that please feel  free to fill in your details on our contact us page.

Finally we would like to thank the Linus plus the team at Econsultancy and everyone else that has taken part in the 2010 Econsultancy and Adestra email marketing census, if you would like to stay up to date on these hot topics please subscribe to our RSS feed and/or newsletter to make sure that you receive the latest news.

Just over half of emarketers in the UK (57%) admit to cleansing their databases regularly – finds the largest survey ever undertaken of email marketers from Adestra and E-consultancy.* Small wonder most companies have problems with email effectiveness and deliverability.

*source: The E-Consultancy/Adestra Email Marketing Industry Census 2008, published March 2008, surveyed over 600 in-house and agency respondents across different industry sectors.

The new findings show deliverability is a major problem with more than half having trouble getting into recipients’ inboxes and over two thirds of companies are not using email effectively. The key reasons behind this are cited as lack of budget and poor quality of data. Targeting contacts with relevant messages from an accurate database is fundamental. Without clean, complete and accurate data, messages can never be relevant and targeted despite one’s best intentions.

Paul Crabtree, Marketing Director at Adestra, says: “The research highlights the importance of good data in email marketing – without this foundation your strategy is dead in the water, no matter how good the design and content are. To move your ROI from email to 5x start by investing in cleansing your databases and linking them together.”

To ensure the databases are updated automatically and capture data obtained from multi-channel routes, the systems must be integrated – yet more than 8 in 10 have ‘no integration’ or ‘some’. Having systems that don’t talk to each other not only prevents the effective measurement of ROI, but fundamentally hampers effective marketing overall – particularly in a multi-channel scenario. There appears to be a huge spread of email marketing effectiveness – 49% of company email marketers say that their ROI is up to 2x, while 24% are achieving 5x or more – and the use of integrated systems and good data plays a significant part in this.

Disappointingly, this lack of confidence in the accuracy of their data, due to a lack of ‘joined up thinking’, means many marketers are reluctant to deploy seemingly simple, tactical campaign improvements such as personalisation, segmentation and testing programs. In addition, failure to encourage customers while they are in buying mode – 2 in 3 emarketers admit to not emailing abandoned baskets – is a major lost revenue opportunity. “On the simplest tactical level, not getting your house in order prevents marketers from implementing small improvements which are proven to deliver better ROI. Put simply, email marketers are forced to ‘spray and pray’ if they are not confident in the accuracy of their data,” adds Paul.

Marketers looking to use email marketing as part of their marketing mix need to invest in integrating their systems and building their database of contacts. Without legal, efficient and accurate data collection methods marketers will be unable to properly use the email channel in their programs.

Often, the outsourced email marketing tool is bolted on to existing processes and builds up a database of information including preference information, behavioural information and more. Most email companies can now integrate this information with marketer’s own web sites and databases as standard. Others work with companies, such as Data Salon or Wyvern, who provide database products that can consume data from numerous different sources in an organisation, de-dupe contacts and match them to campaigns to provide measurement and ROI tracking.

Work with your ESP (and database aggregators) to improve your database in following ways: 1. Implement a regular cleansing program 2. Invest in integrating key systems across your organisation 3. Always use confirmed double opt-in 4. Survey your contacts to learn more about them in order to improve your segmentation and behavioural targeting 5. Invest in email validation to ensure the make up of domains is correct 6. Don’t do all the work yourself – encourage contacts to use ‘update your details’ forms 7. Always record the original source of the data

*The full E-consultancy report is available now from www.adestra.com/census

Paul Crabtree, Marketing Director

What a horrid, wet and cold bank holiday that was. It probably gave you the same problem I faced; what were we going to do?

Let’s face it; most of us plan something for our bank holidays. But when bad weather comes along, you have to find something else to do, indoors.

I was reading E-consultancy’s Email Marketing Census the other day and noticed an interesting fact: More than half of company email marketers (57%) said their organisations were using less than 50% of their email systems’ functionality.

This surprised me. Most of the email marketers I have spoken to in the last month plan to use a number of advanced techniques to ensure their messages are as relevant as possible, yet through the survey it looks like some form of unpredictable ‘bad weather’ has come along and ruined these best laid plans.

Like other ESPs, we invest in our platform functionality as we work with our customers to produce tools to improve their marketing performance. At Adestra, our product road map is driven by our clients and market trends. Reacting to market needs means that every piece of functionality is developed to allow UK email marketers to be more effective. This consultation process ensures our messages are relevant and useful.

So why aren’t they using the features?

Not everyone needs every bit of functionality out there. B2B companies with no forms/e-commerce capabilities do not need to integrate with their website. Companies with no demographic information about their contacts cannot adopt demographic targeting as the basis of their segmentation model. Marketers sending irregular newsletters may not perform real time synchronisation and integration of their email marketing database with their CRM system.

However, according to the survey, the biggest barriers to effective email use (according to company email marketers) are as follows:

1. Lack of Skills & Training (42% viewed this as a problem)
2. Lack of Budget / Finances (39%)
3. Lack of Strategy (36%)
4. Lack of Segmentation (35%)
5. Quality of Email Database (35%)

Working in the industry for a great number of years, I believe the root cause of this problem is simply not having enough time, particularly when you’re in a 4 day week after a bank holiday!

If you don’t have time, then you find yourself rushing the email out instead of taking time to look at what you’re doing, trying to use the features provided by your ESP, and understand how they can improve the results.

Something as simple as ensuring that all records are de-duped so that you can build a history of a contact’s behaviour over time means that targeting all those people that respond in a certain way is possible.

Setting up order tracking by including some tracking code on your web site to get an idea of ROI allows you to understand and build testing plans to improve your email marketing.

Spending some time to set up some small things mean that when you do have time, at least you have things set up to take your marketing to the next stage when you’re ready

What about getting some training?

With the majority of contacts believing that a skills deficit is a problem. There are a number of good courses out there including those offered by E-consultancy itself.

There is nothing better for networking with your peers than attending a big industry conference. The DMA is organising a series of events on email marketing, the next one of which is “Sophisticated Email Marketing” on the 14th June.

My top tip though would be to ensure that any staff you do your best to retain any staff whom have with a genuine interest in email marketing. It’s a thought echoed by this very site:

“If you have staff that specialise in email marketing, retain them! With 42% of people citing skill shortages as a barrier to effective email marketing, keeping the experts and training your other staff should be a priority for every marketing director.” *

I think one thing that is often overlooked is the shared knowledge that the email marketing companies can provide. Speak to your email marketing partner and ask them what else you could be doing. Getting this two way dialogue will allow you to see the quick wins and allow you to understand how the advanced functionality can help you in your role.

A final thought would be for those people looking to appoint a new email marketing partner. Having the functionality that you can use today and tomorrow is often better than having every piece of functionality available. Conducting an in depth and internal review of your requirements will enable you to identify the best partner for your email marketing requirements.

Henry Hyder-Smith, MD