I’ve been taking a look at the latest trends in email marketing based on the DMA Email tracker in advance of speaking at the Email Innovations Summit at Data-driven business later in the month.
Since the focus is data or insights-driven business, I was interested to see how evaluation of email marketing has moved on (or not).
I like the DMA email tracker report since it asks respondents to a survey to give an estimate of the average ROI of email marketing.
This always shows the power of email marketing as a relatively low-cost responsive medium which drives results in many industry sectors...
In 2018, the ROI of email marketing is £32.28 for every £1 spent, up from £30.03 last year.
Digging into the details of how email marketing is evaluated, which measures are used? Since there are many potential measures, the DMA asked for ‘three key metrics’. These are the responses:
It’s perhaps no surprise that the open and click response metrics are the two most popular, but this suggests to me that many businesses are missing out on the opportunity to review the ‘measures that matter’ for email marketing. For me, the top three measures that are most important to driving results are Engagement (active and inactive subscribers), return on investment / revenue and lifetime value.
It’s understandable that opens and clicks are top since measuring monetary value is less straightforward for non-transactional sectors, but reviewing engagement through time is key to the health of an email marketing programme regardless of the industry.
By Dave Chaffey
Digital strategist Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of online marketing training platform and publisher Smart Insights. Dave is editor of the 100+ templates, ebooks and courses in the digital marketing resource library created by our team of 25+ digital marketing experts. Our resources are used by our Premium members in more than 100 countries to Plan, Manage and Optimize their digital marketing. Free members can access our free sample templates here. Dave is a keynote speaker, trainer and consultant who is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. My personal site, DaveChaffey.com, lists my latest Digital marketing and E-commerce books and support materials including a digital marketing glossary. In 2004 he was recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing. Please connect on LinkedIn to receive updates or ask me a question.
This blog post has been tagged with:
Evaluating the value of email listsTurbocharge your results with this toolkit containing 12 resources
The Email Marketing And Marketing Automation toolkit contains:
Start your Digital Marketing Plan today with our Free membership.
Recommended Blog Posts
Our compilation of average email open rates and click-through rate data. What’s a good open rate for email? Read the best email statistics sources to benchmark your email campaigns in your industry sector When I run training workshops on Email …..
Using tables and flow charts to visualize and plan automated email communications Research shows that behavioral email communication is a powerful technique. Planning and optimizing an automated email campaign strategy empowers marketers and managers to follow-up online customer actions to …..
Industry experts explore the email marketing trends set to impact your strategy in 2021 and consider how COVID-19 has permanently and positively changed email marketing In 2020, email marketing trends, like so many parts of our work and personal lives, …..
