Email research reveals need for dynamic marketing, relevant content

A new email research report by US-based Email On Acid has found that 87% of email marketers plan to invest more money on their programs this year, with half aiming to spend on technology and tools.

It’s because they want to develop dynamic and contextually relevant email campaigns; that is, to become more personalised. Ranging from improved list segmentation to dynamic content – leveraging subscriber data and behaviour – and using machine learning to gather insights and make predictive recommendations, it seems ‘batch and blast’ emailing is on its way out. Artificial intelligence (AI) – providing tailored content and subject lines – is also being hailed as the technology that will make emailing easier and more effective.

And, across North America and Europe, some 70% of email marketers are using programmatic technologies that were originally developed for paid media and applying them to their customers’ inboxes, Adroll reveals, saying that marketers are shifting away from traditional batch emailing in favour of sending potential customers content that is directly related to the pages they’ve visited on a particular site.

All of which will be welcomed by the email recipient, the UK DMA has discovered in its latest research, which shows that relevant and interesting content is what the consumer wants – and what marketers must provide.

The research – sponsored by dotmailer – reveals the increasing importance of the channel. Rachel Aldighieri (pictured), MD of the UK DMA, said: “Email has fast become the channel round which others can be built to create a truly integrated multi-channel marketing programme.”

But she added a note of warning, with the growth in email sparking issues around access to good content and the knock-on effect this has on relevance. She said: “Trust is the key to any long-term relationship and, if marketers want to continue to see the impressive returns on their email spend, they will need to heed consumer concerns and take care to give them what they want.”

Email research shows concerns persist

Skip Fidura (pictured), Client Services director at dotmailer and chairman of the UK DMA’s Responsible Marketing Committee, said the research “paints a worrying picture” and added: “While both consumers and marketers love the channel, consumers continue to say they get too many and irrelevant emails from brands.”

He added: “More worrying still is that 42% of marketers agree. The warning signs are there. More than half of consumers have considered deleting their email account to control the flow of marketing emails they receive.

“As email marketers, we have a responsibility to our customers, to ourselves and to our businesses to keep our channel not just viable but thriving long into the future.”

Highest performing channel remains in robust health

Especially heartening for email marketers were research results revealed by the UK DMA at the beginning of this year in the Email benchmarking report, also supported by dotmailer.

The email research shows that 84% of marketers use email, which was also rated as the best-performing channel by the highest proportion of marketers (41%).

And, of emails sent, 98% of them were delivered – and that is the highest delivery rate yet recorded, increasing by 11% since 2010.

The findings were based on the performance of more than 57 billion emails sent in the UK.

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