Forrester Research just released a study saying 97% of consumers use email and 94% of marketers utilize it within their marketing mix. Plus, this recent research concludes that people who sign up for your email buy more. In fact, those people who purchase due to email spend 138% more than those who are not reading marketing emails. This report also shows that the valuable 18-34 year old demographic – the one that is more likely to be using SMS and other online/electronic channels – is using email. In fact, one-third of consumers that have a separate email address specifically for marketing emails are in this age category.
In Email Marketing Comes of Age Shar VanBoskirk of Forrester states:
There has been a lot of concern that email has lost its effectiveness because it has not grown rapidly, but the aggressive interest in email has only normalized. It should not be a concern that it’s lost its effectiveness, it is still very powerful. It’s just that it’s become like direct mail, which is still an effective marketing tool, but people aren’t as excited about it.
Ms. VanBoskirk goes on say that in 2007 there will be more advanced use of email and the trend will be that more marketing firms will start utilizing email programs with better use of data, segmentation, targeting and personalization. This will include things such as using transactional and triggered emails and closing the loop on metrics and analysis of all marketing data.
ExactTarget’s Chip House, Vice President of Marketing Services, was interviewed about this report in the past week for a podcast by Eric Mattson at jenerous.com, which can be heard from this link. This interview also goes into some detail about the issues and opportunities in email marketing today, from legal compliance, permission, deliverability to the inbox, best practices and more.
The conclusion I draw form the Forrester report is email is very much alive and well and is still a very effective channel to nurture prospects and maintain customer relationships. The key is to make sure upper management is aware of the value of email and how to do it right.