| Several sources indicate email marketing
spend is set to grow over the next 12 months, but as more
brands delve into the process of using email as a marketing
medium, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that strategic
planning and best practice processes are lagging behind.
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) recently published a
survey revealing that less than half of marketers have a
strategy concerning things like maximum email contact
frequency and other basic best practices. Furthermore, only
a quarter of marketers are able to calculate the value of an
email address and 12 percent of respondents don’t even know
how many emails an address should receive each month.
The findings signal a need for marketers to educate
themselves on the best practices that fuel successful email
marketing. Since the medium has been around for so long,
the industry as a whole has adopted a so-called unwritten
set of rules that every marketer should abide by to ensure
compliance and overall success in every email campaign.
The survey highlighted deliverability as marketers’
biggest concern overall, followed by conversion rates,
return on investment and reputation. A heightened focused
on deliverability is attributed to the increasingly
specialized tools and expertise required to get email
delivered to the intended destination. Interestingly,
sender reputation is ranked as the most important
deliverability factor by 36 percent of surveyed marketers,
followed by list hygiene (20 percent) and email content (18
percent).
Email marketing is evolving just as other marketing
channels are, and advertisers need to be aware of changes
regarding everything from deliverability challenges to
list-sources and even content optimization to increase
impressions and click-thru rates. With an ever-growing
checklist of best-practices, rules and regulations to worry
about, it’s sometimes easier to enlist the help of a
third-party who focuses 100 percent on the successful
outcome of your email campaign. |
