Survey: Critical Goals of Email Marketing Also Barriers to Success

The latest Ascend2 “Email Marketing Strategy” survey has revealed the most important goals of an email marketing strategy include increasing engagement rate (54 percent), increasing customer acquisition (48 percent), and improving email personalization (43 percent).

Further, the survey shows that these critical goals are also some of the most significant barriers to email marketing success.

Enriching contact data quality (51 percent), increasing engagement rate (43 percent), and improving email personalization (39 percent) are the respondents’ top challenges. Analyzing important goals in comparison to significant barriers is “critical in the development of a well-balanced and effective strategy for email marketing purposes,” according to authors.

The most effective personalization tactics for campaign messaging include email list segmentation (51 percent), individualized email messaging (50 percent), and behavior-triggered emails (45 percent). Email marketing tactics are most often used during complex sales cycles (49 percent), and less so during direct sales (31 percent).

Surveyors note that “email marketing is a valuable channel used in all types of sales scenarios, but essential when it comes to cycles that are long and complex, involving multiple influencers that require personalized nurturing during the purchase decision process.”

Email Marketing is Top Channel for ROI

The “Email Marketing Industry Census 2016” published by Econsultancy and Adestra found email is the fastest-growing channel for ROI in the marketing industry. Seventy-three percent of respondents rated email marketing as “excellent” or “good” in terms of ROI in 2016, which is up from 66 percent in 2015.

This research also revealed companies that invest at least one-fifth of their marketing budgets on email are eight times more likely to see 50 percent more sales attributable to it.