A review of some interesting statistics found below, they apply to 2007 email marketing efforts across a broad set of organisations. There are defiantly some learning’s and with a little planning and implementation you could strive ahead of your competition by addressing the points raised below:

4.5% of online retailers have a conversion rate from emails of more than 10%; 27.9% have conversion rates under 1%; 25.4% have conversion rates of 1.1% to 4%; 12.7% have conversion rates of 4.1% to 10%. [Source: Internet Retailer via EmailStatCenter, August 2007]

This provides a benchmark figure for you to compare your email marketing efforts, the first point should be ensuring acceptable levels of tracking are in place within your organisation. Once implemented you can compare to the general statistics above and work to improve your email marketing messages.

73% of people said they would make an online purchase as a result of receiving an email offer, while 86% made an in-store purchase as a result of receiving an email. [Source: Epsilon, June 2007]

This displays the importance of product and price messages included within all email communications, not to forget that although Online Business has minimal cost overheads, ensuring that these messages apply to in store business is also important.

Nearly six out of 10 emails (58%) were sent in HTML format.

This shows that not all organisations are taking advantage of HTML email correspondence, HTML should be used, if not your communications will look less professional than your competitors.

Just one out of five emails included promotional offerings.

This figure is concerning, although sending individuals targeted messages which apply to what they expect to receive is important, these are also great opportunities to include a promotional message alongside.

Another Silverpop study, which surveyed 100 US and 50 UK retailers,;found that a third of;retailers;didn’t bother sending;confirmation/courtesy emails. [Source: Silverpop via E-consultancy Blog, July 2007] Of those that did, UK firms did better, sending a personalised response 60% of the time, compared to 34% for the US.

This doesn’t surprise me, the English are renowned for their courtesy, but it shows that there are great improvements to make for US organisations, or that UK organisations can easily ‘WOW’ their US consumers through basic courtesy.

Unsubscribe rates across EmailLabs’ 600+ client base is an average of 0.17% per month. An unsubscribe rate above 0.50% would suggest some significant problems with your email program. [Source: EmailLabs, July 2007]

This is a good figure to benchmark your email communications, measuring your unsubscribe rates are very important and should be monitored when any change to your email communication is made.

On average, companies are spending a fifth of their online marketing budget on Email Marketing (second only to website spend). Despite this high level of investment, 81% of email marketers say they are not using email marketing as effectively as they can, compared to only 13% who are.

The spend explained above is to be expected, but the 81% figure is concerning. People are aware they could improve their email marketing communications, but it is not classed as one of the most important areas to develop. All marketing should be revised and improved on a regular basis, structuring of this development should be implemented to ensure improvements are regularly made.

Almost half of email marketers surveyed (47%) do not know what their company’s Return on Investment from Email Marketing is, suggesting that there is a chronic lack of measurement of this channel’s effectiveness. Excluding those respondents who don’t know what their ROI is, more than half of respondents (55%) say that their ROI from email is three times or more. Almost a third of company respondents (32%) say that their ROI is five times or more.

The 47% of people who do not know what their ROI is from email marketing concerns me, although doesn’t surprise. This demonstrates that people are still treating email as a new communication channel; they are probably doing it because they feel they should, but without measuring results it is a pointless exercise. The fact that people are finding the ROI is three times or more displays serious potential within email marketing. Generally because email is a form of communication that can be read at a time chosen by the recipient. Also that email communications are a continuation of an existing relationship.

Lack of skills & training is perceived to be the biggest barrier to effective email marketing. Some 42% of respondents viewed this as a problem. The next biggest barriers to effective email marketing are lack of budget / finances (39%) and lack of strategy (36%).

Its not suppressing Lack of Skills and Training is perceived as the biggest barrier; with the correct training and skills more budget would be assigned to email marketing and because of this a strategy would be formed. Training and skill development should be a regular process with any form of digital marketing, as there are always new developments and best practices to learn.

More than half of Company Email Marketers (57%) said their organisations were using less than 50% of their email systems’ functionality. Less than a third said they are using more than 50% of their email systems’ functionality.

This ties in with the previous bullet point, people have the systems in place but not the time or budget dedicated to improving their processes.

For email marketers, five highest priority areas for improvement are:
Strategy & Campaign Planning (49% say ‘high priority’)
Measurement & Analytics (44%)
List / Data Quality (43%)
Segmentation(40%)
Campaign Optimisation (32%)

The above figures display that their appears to be no primary focus across email marketers. Strategy and planning should come out at the top, but it’s surprising the other four areas are all very closely classed as the same level of importance. There should be an acceptable standard of requirements used for all email marketing, In essence, email marketing should be approached and focused as a single full circle cycle, not split down into different areas of focus. Without treating all areas as equal importance, the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns will suffer.

8% of email marketers use a Fully Managed Service, 27% use an ASP / Hosted Service, 30% an in-house system and 30% use a mixture of these methods.

Until the required levels of training and skills have been met within an organisation, fully managed services should be used. External consultants should be used to advise on best practice and report on the success of each mailing campaign.

The above figures really demonstrate that organisations are not quick to take advantage of email marketing. I believe that any new method of marketing should have the required time and resources provided until it is fully understood, external skills should be brought in to assist. Without this approach - new methods will not be fully utilised.

As promised further updates to the website, we now have some advice on purchasing bankruptcy mailing lists which can be found here.
http://www.mailing-lists-info.com/buy-bankruptcy-mailing-list/

Alongside the above article we have also added a Bankruptcy mailing list section to the glossary which explains bankruptcy and the lists available in further detail. This can be found here:
http://www.mailing-lists-info.com/glossary/bankruptcy-mailing-list/

We have finally launched our mailing lists website, over the next few weeks the website will be updated and improved. But it made sense to launch the website now as their is some useful information here to read!