March 14 2008
Email is not working
Companies 'losing hundreds of millions of pounds' due to poor email deliverability, research shows
UK companies are failing to prioritise email deliverability despite hundreds of millions of pounds in lost sales as a result of non-delivery, according to the E-consultancy / Adestra Email Marketing Industry Census 2008.
Just over half of email marketers surveyed (51%) said that their organisations had experienced problems reaching recipients' inboxes within the last 12 months, but only 40% said that email deliverability is a priority area.
Only 20% of respondents knew what percentage of their marketing budget has been lost through non-delivery. But calculated from those who can put a figure on this, 11% of email budget is lost through non-delivery on average.
Paul Crabtree, Marketing Director at Adestra, said: "By fixing deliverability, UK email marketers could boost their sales revenue by at least 11% - for UK businesses that equates to over £550 million."
Adestra has estimated that email marketing generated more than £5 billion worth of online sales in the UK last year*, which means that more than half a billion in revenue is being lost due to poor deliverability.
The second annual Email Marketing Industry Census also found that only 57% of respondents carry out regular list cleansing, and the failure of many organisations to do this is a major factor contributing to problems with email marketing effectiveness and deliverability.
E-consultancy's Head of Research Linus Gregoriadis said: "Too many organisations are still failing to carry out essential email practices such as list cleansing and basic segmentation of their email databases.
"The issue of deliverability continues to be a stumbling block for many companies. Research shows that more than half of organisations surveyed have experienced problems reaching the inbox, and yet only 40% say that deliverability is a priority area."
Some 68% of email marketers say they are not using email marketing as effectively as they could, compared to only 24% who are. This is a significant improvement on last year's equivalent statistic, when only 13% of email marketers said that they were using email marketing as effectively as they would like.
* The annual value of total online sales via the internet reached GBP 52 billion (source: DMA Economic Impact Analysis). It is estimated by Adestra that email drives around 10% of online sales.
The report can be bought at http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/Email-Marketing-Census-2008
