Email marketing is one area of online marketing that doesn’t seem to be affected by any form of recession or budget cuts. Compared to Q2 2011, the email volume was up 10% in Q2 2012 according to Experian.
Other good news noted in the report is the fact that open rates have significantly increased as well for 55% of brands. Winner on the social media front of things is Pinterest, which generates the highest numbers of opens and clicks.
On social media, a quote of that part of the statistics:
• 70 percent growth in brands sending ‘Like us’, ‘Follow us’ or ‘Pin us’ email campaigns.
• Pinterest ‘Pin us’ mailings are generating unique click rates that are almost 25 percent higher than other mailings.
• Unique open rates for Twitter ‘Follow us’ mailings are 9.5 percent higher than those for their other mailings, but unique click rates are virtually identical to all of their other mailings.
• Coupons had over 50 percent higher click rates and double the revenue per email than campaigns without offers.
Overall, the biggest volume increase by industry was in travel (40%) and in consumer products and services (19%). A breakdown of the email marketing volume variance by industry:
The press release notes that click rates had been dropping in the past but are stabilizing in more recent news, strengthening the position of email marketing as the best channel to invest in (we posted on that popularity a while ago).
While an increase in volume could be a positive thing, it could also mean that per message, marketers are getting less revenue, therefor needing to send more to hit their email marketing targets. This might seem fine at first, but could have a backlash: fewer subscribes (or more unsubscribes) or more emails getting swept / moved to trashes before being opened / unsubscribed.
So before you go on an all out volume rampage, consider the fact how often you would like to hear from your company as an outsider. Take into account people receive other email in their inboxes than just yours. To be effective in email marketing is to deliver just the right amount of messaging to get your point across without flooding.
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