A study just released by Epsilon and the DMA reports that B2B email marketing is continuing to grow — both volumes of messages AND open rates! Here are the highlights from the study (as reported in BtoBOnline):
According to “Q1 2012 North America Email Trends and Benchmarks,” email volume increased 21.4% in the quarter over the year-earlier period. Despite the added volume, open rates also increased 12.6%, and now reflect an overall 26.2%. Nonbounce rates remained strong, at 96.5%.
This is great news for B2B marketers and what it reflects to me is that more of us are sending well-written, well-thought-out email messages that are relevant to the specific audience. Moreover, I’ll bet that creative teams are designing messages with multiple devices in mind so that more emails are getting read and opened from prospects wherever they are — on the go with their mobile devices or at their desks on their computers.
I believe it also means that B2B marketers are keeping their databases clean and ensuring that they have valid email addresses for their customers and prospects. This is not only good for ensuring that your messages get through — it protects your sender reputation and saves you money, too.
The study was based on about 7.1 billion emails sent by Epsilon on behalf of 150 clients in the first quarter of 2012. Let’s keep the good news coming!
Filed under: B2B email Best Practices, Uncategorized Tagged: | B2B email marketing, Business-to-business, email, email marketing, Epsilon
As B2B email marketing continues its upward trend towards growth, is this a zero sum game, in that another form of marketing is facing a downward trend? Or perhaps, is email marketing growing in correlation with other forms of digital marketing?
Great question! Although you’ll hear a lot of “noise” in the market about one or another of the channels most certain demise, I have yet to see this. And the research proves this out. All direct marketing channels continue to work — when done correctly.
I will say that email marketing is definitely growing in correlation with social media and mobile marketing. I attended a conference sponsored by Silverpop this week in Los Angeles. It was excellent — with a lot of great content. One of the key takeaways of how email marketing can be more effective is to use it specifically to engage with people in different digital channels. For example, use an email campaign to drive traffic to your Facebook or Twitter pages by using a discount or some other call to action that is compelling to the recipient.
From a mobile marketing perspective, it cannot be emphasized enough that more and more a larger percentage of email messages are being read on a mobile device. This means that it needs to be REALLY easy for those messages to be clicked on, read, etc. By making your email messages mobile friendly, you can effectively engage with more recipients on the go as the email is received — as opposed to taking the risk of your message getting buried in an Inbox on a computer. Make your buttons big and easy to click on, and make your messages easily read on a mobile device. One of the creative experts at the conference even went as far to say that you should design all of your emails for mobile — as opposed to the other way around. This way you will be sure to get those messages read.
Thank you for the comment!