New research has found that improving email engagement, followed by increasing sales revenue as well as increasing the number of subscribers are the top priorities businesses have for email.
Top priorities have moved from wanting the most subscribers possible to increasing engagement to retain those subscribers and earn revenue from them. Improving the quality of subscribers was also important for just under 4 in 10 participants of the research (38%).
Most businesses said they were successful in achieving their strategic aims for email marketing, the vast majority rated themselves either very or somewhat successful.
The biggest barrier to their success was found to be improving the quality of subscribers, marketers want to make sure they have the most relevant subscribers for the services and products they offer. For example, B2B marketers who sell email marketing platforms or services would need to make sure their subscribers work both in email marketing and are a buyer of such services. An email database could be huge but they may not be the right people and marketers fully recognise this, it's quality over quantity, as long term this will lead to higher engagement, higher revenues and higher email marketing ROI. The other biggest challenging barrier was found to be increasing conversion rates, which is a long-term challenge for all marketing channels.
So to summarise, the biggest barrier is increasing quality of subscribers and their biggest priority is increasing engagement - marketers want highly engaged, highly relevant subscribers but they have some work to do to achieve this.
By Robert Jones
Robert Jones is a specialist in CRO, UX Research, insight and digital Marketing. He is CRO Analyst at Enjoy Digital. He has a Psychology Masters of Research, has run large digital marketing campaigns to build research panels and worked in insight roles for Vision Critical, ASDA and WhatUsersDo. He also managed all of Smart Insights member resources and published several guides including "How to conduct Persona Research" as well as contributing over 100 blog posts to the Smart Insights blog. When he isn’t working on marketing campaigns he is most likely eating authentic Italian food or planning his next short trip. You can connect with Robert on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter.
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