By Steve Denner

Five years is a long time in any technology market, not least digital marketing and email. So, in its fifth year, the Adestra and Econsultancy Email Marketing Census looks at what’s changed - what’s keeping e-marketers up at night compared to 2007?

The new research, conducted Jan-Feb 2011, highlights three areas for concern: Automation, Deliverability and Relevance.

Automation

Automation has shown the biggest increase since 2007: Automated campaigns (+30%), personalisation (+26%) and measurement/analytics (+22%). This shows while marketers are using ESPs for more automation, they are missing out on crucial basics that need to be part of their ongoing marketing – upsell, cross-sell, remarketing, abandoned basket triggers. For example, 86% still don’t use abandoned basket triggers – which when implemented correctly can provide massive incremental revenue. Since 2008, every category of email triggers has declined except automated abandoned baskets – so there’s a huge amount of missed opportunities!

Deliverability

In the current climate when marketers need to make sure every £ spent is working hard, there are some areas being neglected. For example, 88% of marketers have no idea how much of their budget is lost through non-delivery of email. And it’s getting worse year on year. Clearly brands need to keep on top of this using best practice techniques.

When asked about ways to improve email deliverability, the survey shows ‘cleaning up lists’ is (correctly) top, while ‘relevance’ takes second place. Although relevance does ultimately affect deliverability, you need to be getting your emails into inboxes first. This highlights the need for marketers and agencies to get to grips with the jargon and best practice processes.

Relevance

Looking at email marketing practices, since last year, the use of basic segmentation is down (-3%) and regular list cleansing (-5%) and re-marketing (-13%) are also down. This is surprising as, for emails to be relevant, segmentation and targeting are key. Overlook these simple processes at your peril - re-marketing, for example, is very simple to do and, because it is inherently relevant, can provide excellent return.

With new channels such as social media growing exponentially, and a changing landscape with the take up of smartphones meaning m-commerce is now an established channel, a brand’s engagement and interaction with customers is more under the spotlight than ever before. This all means email has had to adapt – and it has done successfully – with more email campaigns being sent than ever before.

The Adestra and Econsultancy Email Marketing Census is the largest survey of UK email marketers with research results from almost 900 in-house and agency staff.

It’s time for marketers to get ‘back to basics’ – some crucial areas are dropping off marketers’ radars such as email triggers, deliverability and re-marketing. They need to be consistently covering all the basics – this is where their ESP can help.

Get the fundamentals right, use the available technology and best practice advice and there’s no reason why email can’t evolve again over the next 5 years into an even better communication and customer engagement channel, delivering improved response rates.

About the author

Steve Denner is co-founder and director at Adestra. Steve is highly experienced in developing and delivering email solutions, having headed up teams responsible for bringing five separate email applications to market. Throughout his twelve years' experience in the industry he has worked with many organisations on delivering technical solutions.

To request a copy of the Adestra and Econsultancy Email Marketing Census 2011 click here: http://www.adestra.com/emailcensus.