On Thursday 26th March, the Data & Marketing Association (DMA) launched the 2020 edition of their Marketer Email Tracker. This is an annual study where they ask marketers a range of questions to get their insight in to the email channel.
The webinar where the research was launched, was followed by a panel session. The key message from the panel was that due to Covid-19, it has never been more important for marketers to ensure their marketing messages are relevant. If your product can not be used or delivered to your customers, then as a marketeer it is important to pull back on this marketing for the time being.
You can find the full research here on the DMA website https://dma.org.uk/research/marketer-email-tracker-2020. We found this research very insightful and our key takeaways are -
1. Marketing Landscape
- In most cases email continues to be the preferred channel for marketers which is echoed from the consumer email tracker earlier this year, showing good consumer alignment.
- It looks like Marketers have an over reliance on email as a channel with 75% reporting this as their preference, vs. 46% of consumers. Consumers will want to communicate with your brand on the channel they wish to, rather than how you want to communicate with them, presenting key challenges for routing of those enquiries.
- The research shows an in-balance for mail at pre purchase stage; however, we would imagine this is due to the cost of sending a physical item and would explain the in-balance between consumers & marketers.
2. GDPR Impact
- GDPR is reported as high on the agenda for a third of marketers, we think this is surprisingly low – unless those marketers are not dealing with below the line marketing of course.
3. Objectives & Challenges
- Email is key or driving sales as a channel with a more immediate effect and given its measurability vs. some other channels.
- Budget / resource, data & leadership strategy are cited as key challenges to being able to execute email programmes. Data should be a key focus for all businesses as they seek to understand their customer needs and to market their products and services to relevant customers.
4. Understanding & Practices
- Competencies has been broken down by area, for example execution, strategy, testing, data management to understand not only who is doing, but also if their sophistication is good, leading or none. Only 85% of respondents are doing any form of testing. Email is the easiest channel to do this and can make significant improvements, see our previous blog post on testing.
5. Measurement
- More marketers than ever are now able to track return on investment (70%) and customer live time value (50%) from their email programmes.
- However, the reported return on investment number has declined from £42.21 to £35.41 for every £1 spent – this could be down to a range of factors as cited in the report, but also down to the marketers who provided answers.
- Its good news – marketers have reported increases in all key metrics - delivery, open, click and conversion rates. Decreased opt out rates, and spam complaints. This could be through the GDPR process that brands have retained data for those who are regularly engaging with their brands.
6. Content
- In the consumer email tracker, 85% of consumers said that they felt under half of the email messages they received were relevant to them. In this marketer email tracker, 47% of marketers say that they believe under half to be relevant to consumers – that is a significant disconnect. This hasn’t really moved year on year, which means marketers need to do more to really understand their consumers and calls for a refocus on the customer.
In summary, email continues to be a highly measurable and successful marketing channel. But like the consumer email tracker, the latest report highlights areas that marketers need to be mindful of.
If you have any questions, get in touch with us today.
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