The success factors in e-mail marketing
Email is better than its reputation—in dialog marketing, it is one of the most efficient tools and benefits from its granular measurability. This is evident from the findings of the study «KPIs in Email Marketing,» which Research Now conducted on behalf of the Email Focus Group within the German Federal Association for the Digital Economy (BVDW).
Compared to most other tools, email offers a variety of success measurement options. Nevertheless, one third of the companies surveyed in this study (34 percent) do not collect any KPIs at all when measuring the success of email tracking. The most commonly collected success factors are open rate (41 percent) and click-through rate (39 percent) - followed by delivery rate (26 percent), conversion rate (24 percent) and unsubscribe rate (22 percent). Click-through rate (18 percent) and bounce rate (15 percent) are considered less frequently.
"It is really astonishing that the open rate, as the fuzziest key figure, has the highest consideration rate here," says André Görmer (Mapp Digital), Chairman of the Email Focus Group at BVDW. The opening rate is still considered the most important reference KPI, he adds. "Yet the click rate, for example, provides much clearer insights for evaluating the success of email communication," explains Görmer. However, the insights are rarely used for campaign optimization: More than half of the respondents (52 percent) state that decisions regarding the implementation of email marketing campaigns in their companies are not made on the basis of KPI-based reporting.
Unchanged high importance in the media mix
Email is stronger than its reputation: it is perceived positively by marketing decision-makers to an above-average degree. While only 42 percent of all respondents agree with the statement that e-mail campaigns still have the same significance in the media mix as they did two years ago, the figure for marketing decision-makers is significantly higher at 69 percent. "Those who use e-mail professionally in dialog marketing appreciate its quality and potential - unfortunately, this reputation has not yet been established on a broad scale," notes André Görmer. Nevertheless, there is room for improvement: More than half (57 percent) of marketing decision-makers say there could be more key performance indicators for e-mail marketing. In addition, most classic KPIs in email marketing are associated with a great deal of fuzziness (marketing decision-makers: 69 percent; overall: 35 percent).
