Personalized Email Campaigns Seen Important, But Not Widespread

Almost all US and European online marketing professionals believe it is very important (68.4%) or important (28.1%) to send targeted and personalized email marketing campaigns, although only 1 in 5 actively personalize their email marketing content across all campaigns, according to a survey released in December 2011 by Emailvision. In fact, the proportion personalizing content across all platforms is almost matched by the percentage not personalizing any of their email marketing (18.5%).

The majority (58.3%) of respondents do engage in some personalization, but still implement one-size-fits-all campaigns.

A January 2011 survey from Alterian found 4 in 10 global marketers (43%) to be using email segmentation to personalize messages by audience. Another 44% still employed email blasts of some kind, although 26% used basic personalization and 18% blasted out on a mass basis. Only 13% reported delivering emails based on preferences at the individual customer level, monitored in real-time.

Most Are Satisfied With Segmentation Ability

Data from the “Emailvision Global Marketing Survey” indicates that the majority of respondents feel satisfied (43%) or very satisfied (12.2%) with their ability to effectively segment and target their customer base, with only 14.71% expressing a dissatisfaction with their ability to undertake this activity.

Respondents to a survey released in December by StrongMail in partnership with Zoomerang appeared less confident in their abilities: 44% of business leaders cited improving segmentation and targeting (44%) as a top 3 most important email marketing initiative, behind only increasing subscriber engagement (48%). However, these priorities rest on data integration, which was cited as the primary challenge in 2012 (45%), ahead of lack of resources (43%) and content management (40%).

Client Data Not Fully Exploited

In fact, respondents to the Emailvision survey also appear to be challenged by data, with only 1 in 10 believing they are fully exploiting their customer data. In fact, a plurality (46.1%) report that they could do more with their customer data, with a further 37.6% saying they could do significantly more.

CTR Presents Top Metric

A leading 58.4% of respondents say a high click-through rate is the key measurement they use to determine a successful email campaign. About 1 in 4 use high open rates as their primary method of assessment, with only a small proportion feeling that instant responses from recipients (11.1%) and low unsubscribe rates (3.7%) are useful in representing a successful campaign.

Overall, 7 in 10 respondents say that email marketing has become more important to their overall marketing strategy in the past 2 years, compared to just 5% who say that it has decreased in importance.

About the Data: Emailvision conducted its survey of over 700 online marketing professionals at managerial level or above in November 2011. The research was conducted in 10 countries (UK, US, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Scandinavia and Switzerland), among a range of industry sectors and company sizes.