Email Marketer’s Top Priorities in 2016
What Are Your Top Priorities for Email Marketing This Year?
When it comes to email marketing, what are your priorities for 2016? Are they consistent with what other marketers are focusing on this year? Econsultancy’s recently published Email Marketing Industry Census 2016 can help answer that question. Here are highlights from that report.
During February and March 2016, Econsultancy, in association with Adestra, surveyed 1,150 global marketers, including in-house respondents from companies (66%), plus supply-side respondents such as agencies, consultants, and vendors (34%). Now in its tenth year, this email-marketing census demonstrates how email marketing, as well as the mindset of email marketers, continues to mature.
Email Marketing Ranks High for Return on Investment (ROI)
As a channel with actual measureable results, email marketing continues to deliver among the highest ROI. In terms of ROI, nearly three-quarters (73%) of the company respondents rated email marketing as excellent or good. Email marketing and SEO (organic search) historically have shared the top two positions for ROI in this survey. This year, email marketing pulled ahead of SEO, with companies 9% more likely to rate email marketing excellent or good compared to SEO.
How Much Are Companies Spending on Email Marketing?
On average, companies are spending 15% of their marketing budgets on the email channel. This figure is slightly higher than last year’s survey results (13%). In addition, companies are 23% more likely than last year to allocate more than 10% of their marketing budgets to email marketing.
Email Marketers’ Top Areas of Focus for 2016
When asked which three areas of email marketing on which they really need to focus in 2016, the following areas rated the highest with respondents:
- Automation (34%)
- Measurement of analytics (28%)
- Strategy and campaign planning (27%)
- Segmentation (24%)
- Personalization (21%)
In addition, census participants were asked, “What do you (or your clients) intend to innovate with email in 2016?” Their top answers included:
- More creative use of behavioral triggers (66% of companies and 46% of agencies)
- Greater use of dynamic elements, such as video, GIFs, and countdown clocks (52% of companies and 44% of agencies)
- Using automation to enable one-to-one communication (46% of companies and 40% of agencies)
- Mobile-optimized customer journey, including email and websites (40% of companies and 35% of agencies)
Do You “Love” Your Email Service Provider (ESP)?
As companies look to expand their email-marketing programs and enhance email campaign performance, their ESP’s capabilities are key to success. In the census, marketers were asked what they thought were the most important attributes of an ESP. Here’s how they responded:
- User-friendly interface (61% of companies and 41% of agencies)
- Marketing automation capability (61% of companies and 49% of agencies)
- Ability to integrate (50% of companies and 37% of agencies)
- Cross-channel capabilities (35% of companies and 28% of agencies)
- Low cost (30% of companies and 42% of agencies)
In this survey, 54% of company respondents and 63% of agency respondents reported that they “love” their ESP. Can you say that you love your ESP? Does it have all the attributes you need to meet your email-marketing goals? Check out this previous NewsLever article for an overview of what you need to consider in choosing the right ESP for your company.
Overall, this census indicates that marketers are optimistic about email’s future and are looking to optimize their customers’ journeys by improving such areas as segmentation, personalization, automation, and behavioral triggers.
Looking for ways to improve your email-marketing results? Contact us today and we’ll discuss how FulcrumTech can help you get the most out of your email campaigns.