In marketing, it seems you can’t beat the classics, but we are too quick to move onto the next pop phenomena that we forget that rare grooves like Email Marketing can still get the party started, as Chief Research Officer Nicholas Einstein, from The Relevancy Group explains.
While the digital marketing spotlight is often squarely focused on newer and more hip topics like influencer marketing and social selling, email has become a primary driver of revenue for most enterprises and a key to addressing customers cohesively across channels. Marketing executives and vendors of enterprise marketing technology both need to tune in to this reality and begin giving credit [and allocating resources] where its due.
Many senders now have the ability to leverage multiple sources of first-party data to deliver campaigns and content that are highly relevant and individualized to specific recipients or segments. Beyond being ‘personalized’ with basic data like first name and email address, these messages can now be crafted with multiple sources of customer data to deliver more engaging, useful, and valuable customer experiences. Email has, for marketers who are investing in the channel, moved beyond the batch-and-blast practices of the past and evolved into a much more highly targeted channel. And recipients have responded.
email response rates on an upward trend .. driving upwards of 20% of total overall revenue..
Data from The Relevancy Group’s executive marketer panel indicate that not only are email response rates on an upward trend, but revenue contribution from the channel also has never been higher – driving upwards of 20 percent of total overall revenue for many senders. Email recipients are engaging with messaging in record numbers and the reason is that sophisticated senders are effectively leveraging customer data to drive increased relevance and more engaging customer experiences.
While they’re laying down a heavy backbeat and, in many cases, driving an enormous percentage of overall revenue for the business, email marketers need to be better served by two key stakeholders:
Marketing Executives
Since the opening note, email has been the digital marketing channel to deliver the highest return on investment of any channel, but it has been routinely underinvested in. Budgets for social, display and search programs often dwarf those in email, even though measurement and attribution of the impact on core business objectives are often much easier through the inbox. Many email marketers often don’t have the resources [in the form of people, data, tools] and clout within the organization to execute the types of campaigns required to delight their audiences and scale their programs – marketing leadership needs to step up, invest, and make email more of a priority.
Vendors of Enterprise Marketing Technology
Many emailers have been hamstrung by siloed data and legacy technology too. While some enterprise-class email service providers have made great strides over the past twelve months towards closing gaps, many remain. Driving engaging customer experiences often requires real-time access to a wide variety of data sources and the tools to effectively act on those data at the proper moment. For far too long many vendors have failed to enable their clients to deliver these experiences. Siloed technology within marketing clouds, poor integrations, and the inability to handle the scale and velocity of customer data have all contributed to the issue. Vendors need to better enable email marketers to leverage more of their first-party data in real-time to deliver the immersive experiences that their audiences increasingly demand.
Relevancy Group ..forecasts a big year of growth across the board in the email channel.
The Relevancy Group believes that enterprise marketing executives will be looking beyond the spotlights in 2020 and forecasts a big year of growth across the board in the email channel. We are also extremely excited about many of the big announcements, acquisitions, and developments coming from many of the big players in our space; these are fun times, for sure. Kudos to all the inbox marketers out there and wishing you all the best for a rocking Q4.
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