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> DIGITAL WORLD in association with
Figure 3: What marketers are using email marketing for Figure 4: Level of personalisation
Internal communications 68.8 21.3 9.9
Personalise by name only 39.6
Increasing website traffic 31.8 44.4 23.7
Personalise by more than name 16.7
Driving offline sales
Use dynamic content
17.5 51.5 31
9.5
(use data to drive targeted content to specific users)
Building brand awareness 30.8 48.4 20.8
We do not personalise content 24.9
Other 2.124.5
Driving direct online sales 19.2 32.8 48
Don’t know 7.2
Generating new sales leads 24.5 52.9 22.6
Maintaining customer relationships 52.1 41 6.9
0pc 10pc 20pc 30pc 40pc 50pc
Always Sometimes Never
0pc 20pc 40pc 60pc 80pc 100pc
Always Sometimes Never
* percentages are rounded
Circulated to 3,000 MII members in April, the objective of the personalise their messages by name only and almost a quarter are
online survey was to examine current email marketing practices not personalising in any way (see Figure 4). Just under 17pc said
and trends in Ireland. Some 628 respondents, including marketing they personalise by more than name, while 9.5pc said they use
professionals and CEOs in various-sized companies and a range dynamic content, whereby they send targeted content to specific
of industries, and covering both business-to-consumer (B2C) and users. On average, B2B marketers use more personalisation than
business-to-business (B2B) marketing, completed the survey. The their B2C counterparts. While a higher percentage of marketers in
full results are about to be published in the Email Marketing Insight smaller companies use some form of personalisation, those in
2008 report. larger organisations are more likely to use dynamic content.
Some of the key findings include the fact that email is seen by The survey indicates that lack of personalisation may have
most as an important element of their marketing strategy. something to do with a lack of data. More than half of the respon-
Interestingly, however, just over half of marketers are using a stan- dents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that “the lack
dard email system such as Outlook to execute their email market- of customer data is holding back email effectiveness”.
ing. Levels of personalisation of marketing messages are low, while As regards email metrics, 19.1pc said they do not know what
there is a good deal of uncertainty regarding the metrics that are metrics are regularly tracked (see Figure 5). Further analysis shows
tracked regularly. On the upside, more than half of the respondents that more than half of the respondents do not know what their
expect to spend more on email marketing over the next year. average open rates are, while over 58pc do not know what their
Overall, 39.4pc of respondents said email is an important part average click-through rates are.
of their marketing strategy, while 38.7pc said it is very important. For the most part, email marketing is allocated a small percent-
Those working in the B2B arena are slightly more convinced than age of the overall marketing budget, with just over 40pc saying that
their B2C peers; in the former group, 42.3pc said it is important it accounts for less than 2pc of their budget. Some 4pc, mean-
and 39.5pc said it is very important, compared with 33.3pc and while, indicated that 21pc of their marketing budget is allocated to
37.6pc respectively in the latter group (see Figure 1). email. Respondents in B2C marketing tend to give email a slightly
Just over 50pc of respondents are using normal email systems bigger slice of the pie, with 15.7pc saying it gets between 6 and
for these marketing activities, as opposed to web-based solutions, 10pc of the budget, compared with 10.6pc for B2B marketers.
in-house systems or outsourced services (see Figure 2). B2B and Over the next 12 months, 55pc of respondents expect to spend
smaller companies are more likely to use the standard email or more on email marketing than they currently do. While the largest
basic web systems. Nearly 60pc of those who responded have proportion (26.2pc) said this increased expenditure would come
databases of fewer than 5,000 email addresses — this figure rises from new budget, 11.8pc said it would be at the expense of direct
to 74pc in B2B. The most common uses for email marketing mail, 12pc from print/press advertising, and 3.8pc each from TV,
include internal communications, managing customer relation- radio and cinema budget and from field marketing (see Figure 6).
ships, building brand awareness, increasing website traffic and Regarding challenges currently facing email marketing, those
generating new sales leads (see Figure 3). surveyed pointed to inbox overload and spam eroding trust in the
medium as the biggest problems. Marketers in B2B in particular
Getting personal
are finding image blocking to be a problem, with 65.7pc agreeing
Some of the most interesting findings relate to the use of person-
or strongly agreeing that it is difficult to do effective email creative
alisation in email marketing. Just under 40pc of respondents
because of this.
32 Marketing Age May/June ‘08
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