Survey: 50% of Marketers Are Still Only ‘Somewhat Successful’ with Email

Not all marketers have found success with email as a tactic, but new research suggests that they have discovered a few ways that they can improve their return-on-investment (ROI).

Ascend2 recently published the results of its “Email Marketing Optimization Survey,” and statistics showed that the majority of marketers (50%) are still only “somewhat successful” at achieving their email marketing goals. This is compared to 38% of best-in-class marketers who said the same. About 12% said they were unsuccessful altogether.

That being said, most respondents (43%) stated that they believe personalization is the most important characteristic in terms of improving upon effective email marketing optimization. This was followed by data quality (39%), email design (34%) and messaging (33%).

Email as a Preferred Form of Marketing Messaging

Despite the challenges that come with email marketing, previous research suggests that this tactic still beats out other tactics in terms of boosting the overall bottom line.

Cheetah Digital and Econsultancy conducted the “Is Your Marketing Strategy Out of Touch?” report, and data indicated that in terms of driving sales, email marketing is still ahead of banner ads, social media native apps and organic posts by 180%. Additionally, approximately three-fourths of U.S. buyers have purchased a product as a direct result of a received email.

About 40% of U.S. customers say that email is their preferred form of messaging, even over in-app and social media messaging.