FLYING ABOVE INDUSTRY STANDARD?

FLYING ABOVE INDUSTRY STANDARD? BENCHMARK REPORT H1 2013

CONTENTS WELCOME TO THE H1 2013 BENCHMARK REPORT! This benchmark report (Half 1 2013) covers email activity from January - June 2013 and a wealth of response data has been collected from email campaigns dispatched across multiple market segments. The analysis includes a breakdown of results by industry sector and information on how this has changed when compared to the first half of 2012. The aim of this analysis is to offer insight around best practice, provide a market overview and help marketers to use the information to create more targeted, engaging and effective campaigns. Cathy Bell, Digital Campaign Manager Introduction 3 Why Is Benchmarking So Important? 5 The Statistics 7 Deliverability 7 Most Popular Email Client 8 Opens By Browser 8 Opens By Device 8 Unique Click Rate 9 Clicks To Open 10 Total Bounce Rate 11 Hard Bounce Rate 11 Soft Bounce Rate 11 Content Bounce Rate 11 Unsubscribe Rate 13 Complaint Rate 14 Social Media Statistics 15 Client Reach & Engagement 17 Engagement Best Month 17 Data Acquisition Per Month 18 Data Acquisition Per Sector 18 Engagement Open Rate By Sector 18 How Do Your Results Compare? 19 Increasing Your Database Size 19 Welcome Emails 20 Test, Test, Test... 21 Image To Text Ratio 22 Social 22 Key Trends For The Rest Of 2013 23 Dynamic & Relevant Content 24 The Power Of Data 24 Mobile & Responsive Design 24 Social 25 Re-engagement Campaigns 25 Video In Email 26

WHY IS BENCHMARKING SO IMPORTANT? Benchmarking is a great way to help you compare your business against the performance of others in the same sector, allowing you to see if your campaigns are really as successful as you think they are. BENCHMARKING Benchmarking can be very challenging for businesses to conduct individually; comparing themselves against others in the same sector, as well as understanding the expected industry averages, and so the benchmarking report aims to deliver comparable results in one place. For some, a good result can be an above average open and click through rate, but others may disregard these metrics and purely focus on a high conversion rate. LOOKING BACK From the last report, Half 2 2012, we looked at what worked well, what could be improved and how important feeding back key learning points to future campaigns is. Moving forward it would be good to see organisations analysing the data they send to. For example, how many people in your database actually open, click and convert from your email campaigns? Further information on this can be found in the re-engagement section of this report. WE BELIEVE THAT THE BEST WAY TO MEASURE THE SUCCESS OF AN EMAIL CAMPAIGN IS TO DETERMINE WHETHER IT MET, AND IDEALLY, EXCEEDED YOUR BUSINESSES OBJECTIVES. LET S GET DOWN TO THE GOOD STUFF; THE STATISTICS... WHAT S INCLUDED IN THE REPORT? The data used to collate the results include a range of email types such as highly targeted newsletters, promotional and transactional emails to triggered welcome and reengagement campaigns. This report includes statistics for a number of campaign types sent across a variety of industries and sectors. The data has been collected between 1st January and 30th June 2013 and was analysed to produce detailed statistics on: Overall Statistics* Share to Social Key trends Identified? Predictions for the remainder 2013 HELPING MAKE SENSE OF THE NUMBERS Sector Statistics* Opens by Device Email reach & Engagement Purchase Conversion Statistics * Open, click, bounce, complaint and unsubscribe rates. 5 6

THE STATISTICS The following sectors have been included in the report;,,,, Utilities,,,,, Unions & Bodies and. MOST POPULAR EMAIL CLIENT Below is a snapshot of the opens by email client metrics between January and June 2013. The statistics shown are not exclusive, as some recipients tend to use more than one email client when reading an email, which registers each time the email client is used. As you can see, the most popular client is ios, covering iphone and ipad. DELIVERABILITY What good is your email if it doesn t even reach your recipient s inbox? Between 1st January and June 30th 2013, just over 1.5 billion emails were sent using Communicator, with our clients receiving above average results for inbox delivery when compared against the latest industry statistics. ios DEVICE 35.60% OUTLOOK 20.14% HOTMAIL 13.57% APPLE MAIL 11.00% YAHOO! 9.85% HALF 1 2012 98% DELIVERED AND 2% UNDELIVERED HALF 1 2013 99% DELIVERED AND 1% UNDELIVERED GMAIL 8.43% ANDROID 4.74% WINDOWS LIVE 2.73% THUNDERBIRD 1.03% AOL MAIL.79% The statistics for emails opened on mobile devices is now averaging at 76.93% across dispatches sent from Communicator, which is growing at a rapid pace. The industry average, as stated by the DMA is currently 43%, although they also state much higher rates are often achieved, as seen in this case. These results stress the importance of responsive email design to ensure an optimum user experience. This is vital to achieve and maintain a high level of engagement and conversion. The average opens on mobile devices have now surpassed desktop, emphasising the demand for mobile friendly emails, which render correctly across the ever expanding range of mobile devices. FIREFOX - 4% SAFARI - 1% INDUSTRY 83% DELIVERED AND 17% UNDELIVERED (stats taken from Econsultancy) Communicator s delivery rate has continued to excel against industry average over the first half of 2013. CHROME - 7% OTHER - 58% DESKTOP - 23.07% This is down to the continued work of the Communicator team who constantly work with all of our clients to ensure good quality data is always used when sending relevant and engaging emails. INTERNET EXPLORER - 30% OPENS BY BROWSER MOBILE DEVICE - 76.93% OPENS BY DEVICE 7 8

LAST TIME... In the last benchmarking report we saw that the figures for the average click to open rate were higher and we identified that this was down to clients putting testing strategies into effect. The drop in the results for the first half of this year could be down to organisations no longer doing as much testing on their email campaigns. The key to testing your campaigns is to view every campaign as a test. Just because it s worked before doesn t mean that it will continue to work. If you ve not already done so, put a testing strategy together. It s not too late to increase your clicks to open. CLICKS TO OPEN Clicks to Open rate measures the percentage of opened messages that recorded clicks. UNIQUE CLICK RATE 15% 12% 9% 6% 3% UNIQUE CLICK RATE 3.11% 2.64% 5.50% 1.76% 4.76% 2.07% 1.99% 4.97% 15.23% 12.68% 4.34% 2.67% 3.37% 4.02% Half 1-2012 4 SECTORS HAVE INCREASED SINCE 2012. THE BIGGEST INCREASE IS OF 2.98% IN THE FINANCIAL SECTOR 3.29% 1.50% 2.28% 2.71% 5.71% 3.27% Half 1-2013 1.91% 2.74% A Unique Click denotes the total number of individual users that clicked a link, regardless of how many times each user clicked the particular link. UNIQUE OPEN RATE The Unique Open rate measures one open per recipient and is expressed as a percentage of the total number of delivered email messages. CLICKS TO OPEN 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 87.85% Half 1-2012 Half 1-2013 BUSINESS SERVICES AND FINANCIAL SERVICES ARE STEADLY INCREASING SINCE 2012 40% 30% 20% 10% UNIQUE OPEN RATE 16.54% 17.39% 27.53% 19.58% 19.11% 11.09% 12.80% 23.89% 40.23% 47.95% 21.80% 18.10% 17.45% 22.30% 21.67% 18.34% 12.11% 18.41% 5 SECTORS HAVE INCREASED SINCE 2012. THE BIGGEST INCREASE IS A MASSIVE 11.09% 25.11% 21.75% 11.75% 15.92% 30% 20% 10% 18.83% 15.17% 19.97% 9.01% 24.92% 18.67% 15.56% 18.67% 26.45% 19.92% 14.78% 19.93% 18.03% 15.19% 8.17% 18.83% 14.69% 22.75% 15.03% 16.23% 17.22% 9 10

CONTENT BOUNCE RATE A Content/Reputation Bounce is an email that s been returned due to the content of the email or the reputation of the sender. Content reasons are due to the filtering being applied by the recipient s mail servers resulting in the email content being rated as similar to unsolicited mail. Reputation reasons are due to the recipient s mail servers lowering the available throughput of emails. This is because of previous campaign s data generating spam trap hits, complaints and poor content filtering results. Communicator will not attempt to send this email to these recipients again, but will send new messages to these recipients. HARD BOUNCE RATE 5% 4% 3% 2% 1% HARD BOUNCE RATE 0.12% 0.16% 5.89% 0.45% 0.30% 0.68% 0.46% A DECREASE HAS 0.45% BEEN SEEN IN 8 SECTORS ALBEIT ONLY SMALL IN SOME CASES, IT DOES SHOW AN IMPROVEMENT IN QUALITY. 0.78% 0.45% 0.34% 0.24% 0.12% 0.18% Half 1-2012 Half 1-2013 0.46% 1.15% 0.48% 0.40% 0.73% 0.53% 0.18% 0.21% 0% A Hard Bounce is an email that s been returned due to the recipient s mailbox being invalid or unreachable. This may occur if the domain doesn t exist, the mailbox doesn t exist, or if there are relaying or routing issues for the domain. Communicator will not attempt to send to these recipients again. SOFT BOUNCE RATE A Soft Bounce is an email that s been unable to be delivered due to a temporary failure. Communicator will repeatedly try to send the email to the specified address for up to 48 hours. Once this time has elapsed, this will then be reported as a Soft Bounce within the Dispatch results. A Soft Bounce may occur if the recipient s mailbox is full or the recipient s mail server is temporarily unreachable. Communicator will attempt to send to the specified email address on the next requested dispatch. TOTAL BOUNCE RATE The Total Bounce rate is the overall number of bounces, soft, hard and content bounces. CONTENT BOUNCE RATE.50%.25% 0.32% 0.18% 0.44% 0.33% 0.22% 0.06% 0.51% 0.20% 0.42% 0.14% 0.08% 0.04% 0.46% 0.15% 0.30% 0.58% 0.51% 0.44% THERE S BEEN A CLEAR REDUCTION 0.24% IN THE % OF CONTENT BOUNCES ACROSS ALL BUT 2 SECTORS. 0.24% 0.12% 0.16% 5% 4% 3% 2% 1% 10% 8% 6% 4% 2% 0.47% 0.41% 0.95% 0.72% SOFT BOUNCE RATE 3.10% 1.28% TOTAL BOUNCE RATE 9.43% 2.07% 0.65% 0.64% 1.18% 5.42% 1.46% 1.38% 6.40% 2.11% 0.40% 1.60% 0.38% 1.26% 0.18% 0.60% WE HAVE SEEN A DECREASE ACROSS 7 SECTORS, THANKS TO IMPROVED REPUTATION WITH ISP S 0.18% 0.64% 0.72% BOUNCE RATE DEPENDS ON THE QUALITY OF YOUR DATA. COMMUNICATOR WORKS WITH CLIENTS TO KEEP THIS DOWN. 0.45% 1.22% 1.05% 0.51% 1.50% 1.27% 3.23% 1.40% 1.56% 2.83% 2.40% 0.83% 0.44% 1.81% 1.22% 0.44% 0.89% 0.73% 1.27% 11 12

UNSUBSCRIBE RATE An unsubscribe means that the email recipient has chosen not to receive any further communication. There are a number of different types of unsubscribes, which can be defined as follows: Click Unsubscribes This is a standard unsubscribe where a recipient has received an email and has clicked the unsubscribe link within the email. List Unsubscribes This applies to Hotmail email addresses only and appears above the header of the email as an option to unsubscribe from the Mailing List. Reply Unsubscribes If a recipient replies to a dispatched email, and types Unsubscribe or Unsubscribe Me, for example, in the subject line or body of the email, they will be unsubscribed from the Mailing List from which the email campaign was sent..10%.8%.6%.4%.2% COMPLAINT RATE Feedback Loop Unsubscribes This is also known as a Complaint and is when a recipient has reported the email as Junk or Spam by clicking on the associated button within the Email Client. Feedback Loop Unsubscribes apply to a number of different ISPs including Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL. The email address is automatically unsubscribed from all Mailing Lists within the associated Communicator account. COMPLAINT RATE 0.05% 0.03% 0.05% 0.02% 0.07% 0.06% 0.08% 0.06% 0.09% 0.06% 0.09% 0.07% 0.05% 0.04% 0.10% 0.07% 0.07% 0.03% 0.09% 0.06% 0.05% 0.04% Data Capture Form Unsubscribes This occurs when a recipient unsubscribes from a mailing list via an Unsubscribe Page created by using a Communicator Data Capture form. UNSUBSCRIBE RATE Half 1-2012 Half 1-2013.40%.20% 0.15% 0.13% 0.34% 0.14% 0.12% 0.09% 0.14% 0.10% 0.16% 0.14% 0.27% 0.22% 0.10% 0.13% 0.16% 0.29% 0.11% 0.19% 0.22% 0.19% 0.06% 0.09% Compared to the first half of 2012 we ve seen a decrease across all sectors in the complaint rate. This is down to the continuous work of clients, sending more relevant emails to their database. Communicator actively works with clients to ensure that their emails comply with best practice. The key is to focus on quality over quantity. If your open rate isn t what you expected delve a little deeper, as chances are your conversion and click to open rates will show the real success of your campaign. The unsubscribe rate has reduced for most of the sectors with the most significant being. To help reduce unsubscribe rates it s critical to ensure you re sending relevant emails to your recipients. If you have the ability to capture additional data on your recipients, then use this information to personalise content when planning out your email campaigns. Be dynamic! - If a recipient feels the email is aimed directly at them you greatly decrease the chance of them unsubscribing. 13 14

SOCIAL MEDIA STATISTICS 2,229 3,687 2,937 550 BUSINESS SERVICES TRAVEL & TOURISM 15 TRAVEL & TRAVEL TOURISM & TOURISM 590 55 CHARITIES, TRADE UNIONS & BODIES H1 PUBLIC SECTOR 2 COMMUNICATIONS, MEDIA & MARKETING CHARITIES, TRADE UNIONS & BODIES H1 H1 FINANCIAL SERVICES 1,946 COMMUNICATIONS, MEDIA & MARKETING 2013 2012 FINANCIAL SERVICES 29 1,322 35 COMMUNICATIONS, MEDIA & MARKETING 2013 330 EDUCATION & TRAINING 13 CONSUMER & RETAIL EDUCATION & TRAINING CONSUMER CONSUMER & RETAIL & RETAIL BUSINESS SERVICES 2,617 51 2,229 982 687 COMMUNICATIONS, MEDIA & MARKETING 35 550 H1 2012 TRAVEL & TOURISM CONSUMER & RETAIL 330 FACEBOOK It s clear there s been a large increase in the use of social 15 media for Travel & Tourism,, CHARITIES, and TRADE UNIONS, signifying the & BODIES value of social share to this industry. Some of the sectors who haven t yet embraced the use of social share within their emails tend COMMUNICATIONS, to send highly MEDIA & sensitive content such as MARKETING Utilities, who 1,322 send information with regards to bills and statements. This is not something readers would want to share with their friends or followers, meaning it is likely these sectors will remain low in comparison to others. CONSUMER & RETAIL TRAVEL & TOURISM H1 2013 TWITTER There s a clear increase in the use of Twitter shares. 590 This is demonstrated in the results for the sector. FINANCIAL and SERVICES are increasing dramatically from 2012, signifying the value of social share to this industry. Some EDUCATION of the sectors that haven t yet embraced & TRAINING the use of social share 13 within their emails tend to send private information that recipients wouldn t want to broadcast to their followers. BUSINESS SERVICES COMMUNICATIONS, MEDIA & MARKETING 20 170 H1 2012 TRAVEL & TOURISM CONSUMER & RETAIL 22 982 687 15 16

CLIENT REACH & ENGAGEMENT When you re looking at your email campaigns, what metrics do you analyse? Open rate per dispatch, click through rate and conversion rate? It s easy to look at these statistics as they re accessible and most likely how the success of your campaign is measured. However what these statistics don t show you is recipient engagement. For example, if you re in the travel industry do your recipients only open your emails when it s time to look for a holiday or do they open all year round? ENGAGEMENT OPEN RATE BY SECTOR When you re putting your reports together you should be looking at the activity of your recipients and not just the campaigns themselves. Looking at this can help you with the content of your email campaigns. For example, if they re not engaging with what you re currently sending then try a different message to get them to open. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 As mentioned in the last Benchmarking report, the DMA proposes different metrics known as open reach and click reach when measuring email recipient engagement. They published a paper earlier this year Email Engagement White Paper which reviews this topic in more detail. Since the last Benchmarking report was published we ve also released additional features in Communicator, which allows you to see the level of engagement per dispatch. This gives you greater insight into the behaviour of your recipients. 10.76% 4.90% 7.96% 10.13% 7.50% 6.68% 19.98% 21.94% 0.29% 5.49% The graph shows which sectors have the most active subscribers in terms of email opens. As we ve seen highlighted through the rest of this report, the Utilities sector is standing out with a very high open rate based on engagement. This Is likely based around the advancement of online billing and meter reading requests being sent via email. DATA ACQUISITION PER MONTH 10% 8% 6% THE BEST MONTHS FOR ACQUIRING NEW DATA APPEARED AT THE START OF THE YEAR. THIS IS LIKELY LINKED TO A RENEWED FOCUS ON DATA CAPTURE IN THE NEW YEAR. KEY FOR THE PAGE 1 - BUSINESS SERVICES 2 - CHARITIES TRADE UNIONS & BODIES 3 - COMMUNICATIONS, MEDIA & MARKETING 4 - CONSTRUCTION & PROPERTY 5 - CONSUMER & RETAIL 6 - EDUCATION & TRAINING 7 - UTILITES 8 - FINANCIAL SERVICES 9 - PUBLIC SECTOR 10 - TRAVEL & TOURISM DATA ACQUISITION PER SECTOR JANUARY FEBRUARY ENGAGEMENT PER MONTH 35% MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE UNLIKE THE SECOND HALF OF 2012, WHICH SHOWED A SIGNIFICANT CHRISTMAS INFLUENCE ON OPENERS, OVERALL OPEN RATES FOR THE FIRST HALF OF THIS YEAR ARE FLAT. 1 37.60% 2 30.03% 3 31.87% 4 27.99% 5 39.34% 6 31.60% 7 53.32% 8 38.68% 9 28.60% 10 37.10% 34% 33% JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE Mailing list growth is a key factor in improving the reach of your email campaigns. As we ve seen in other areas throughout this document, the Utilities and Financial Sectors are showing positive figures, again this will follow the same reasons of online billing and e-statements. For further information on how to increase your mailing list growth please see our Mailing List Growth Strategies document. 17 18

HOW DO YOUR RESULTS COMPARE? If your emails are underperforming then take a look through our guide to improving your email and helping you increase that all important ROI. INCREASING YOUR DATABASE SIZE Mailing list growth is key to improving your email engagement. One of the best places to capture email addresses is on your website. It s important to think about the position of your sign up form; make it visible and don t hide it at the top or bottom of your page. Also don t restrict your site to only have the sign up form on one page. Think about having a quick sign up option on every web page, making it easy for your visitors to sign up. Keep your sign up form short. At this stage only collect what s crucial information, e.g. email address and first name for personalisation. Any other required information can be captured later via a welcome programme linking to a preference form. Depending on your business, ask yourself as a visitor to your website what s in it for me, what do I get out of signing up? Test whether giving your visitors an offer, e.g. 15% off your first purchase when you sign up, or try letting them know that by signing up they ll be the first to know about sales or great offers to see if either of these increase the number of subscribers. The incentive needs to be relevant and updated often. Find out what triggers your visitors! Think about using colour and even animation for your sign up notice. The wording you use can also affect whether a person decides to sign up or not. For example, Join 26,000 of your peers by signing up to receive our newsletter. This is a great thing to test. Lightboxes are also a great way of increasing your subscriptions. This is something you can test and record over a period of time to measure how many subscribers you get per day in comparison to your usual sign up method. People who have trialed this have seen a dramatic increase in the amount of sign-ups they ve received. The trick is to not show the lightbox every time a person visits. Test timings and different pages on your website for this. Another good way of increasing your mailing list is utilising Facebook. Within Communicator we have the functionality to allow you to share your newsletter to your Facebook page once it s been dispatched. Do this along with a Facebook post saying, for example, look what offers you re missing out on! Subscribe to our newsletter now! Here you can direct them to your sign up page or take advantage of our Facebook App. This allows your followers to sign up directly from Facebook. For additional tips on how to increase your mailing list see our Mailing List Growth Strategy document. WELCOME EMAILS A welcome email is an essential but often overlooked part of your email marketing strategy. As well as confirming that a subscription s been successful, it s also the first email a new subscriber will receive from you so it s important to make a positive first impression. The time at which a person subscribes to your mailing list is arguably the most important moment within the customer cycle. According to a study by MarketingSherpa, it s also likely to be the most opened email you send. Therefore they require just as much attention as your other email campaigns. Subscribing to a mailing list using a really great data capture form is one thing, but sending a fantastic welcome email within a few minutes after subscribing shows your recipients what they should expect right from the start. This first communication sent to a brand new subscriber could make or break your ongoing email relationship with them. If this one gets their attention and they enjoy reading it, they re more likely to engage with future communications you send to them. THE DMA S NATIONAL CLIENT EMAIL REPORT 2013 STATED THAT, ALTHOUGH THE USE OF WELCOME EMAILS HAD RISEN A STAGGERING 253% SINCE 2011, STILL ONLY 53% OF EMAIL MARKETERS ACTUALLY SEND THEM. Subscriber numbers can often start to deplete any time within two weeks after initially subscribing. The time at which a person subscribes to your mailing list is arguably the most important, as that moment your brand is at the forefront of their mind. You have their attention, so you should use it! The subscriber has demonstrated that they re interested and they want to hear from you. By neglecting any opportunity for engagement at this time, you risk losing the opportunity to gather useful information in order to enhance and prolong the customer relationship. First impressions count, so it s not only important to confirm a subscription but to communicate your brand in a positive way. A welcome programme is an essential part of your email marketing strategy, however it is often overlooked. The predominant reason a recipient chooses to unsubscribe is due to the content of an email message being irrelevant or uninteresting to them. Obtaining key information during the welcome phase ensures that future marketing messages will be targeted, relevant and of interest to the subscriber. 19 20

TEST, TEST, TEST... It s important to understand that, like most elements of marketing, there s far more science than art to successful email marketing. Testing can help you understand audience behaviour and preferences. It can also help to identify and solve problems in email campaigns. The key is to test all of the different factors of your email campaign and find out what works for your recipients and then understand why it works. We all have our own opinions of what works in email marketing but the truth is any opinion is worthless until it s been tested out on your target market. The people in your mailing list are the people who determine whether your campaign s been a success or not. A testing strategy can make you money with the added bonus that it ll not actually cost you any more to implement. Many elements are easy to test and you don t have to wait for the results. Within Communicator, results can be seen in real time and the final result is full optimisation of your campaign. IMAGE TO TEXT RATIO When you re designing your email campaign it s too easy to get caught up in making your email as creative as possible. However pretty designs don t always lend themselves to best practice when it comes to email design. There s a common misconception that packing an email with as many product images and as little text as possible will entice the recipients to click and buy more products. The problem with this is that you might have a fantastic looking email, but if the image to text ratio isn t correct then intended recipients won t even see it, as it might not actually get into the inbox. Therefore by choosing to design the email with as little text as possible you risk not only losing a high percentage of your mailing list to the junk folder, but also risk alienating customers who choose not to download images, have disabilities, use screen-readers etc. This doesn t mean that your email has to contain reams and reams of text...far from it. With a bit of design know-how and prior planning you can create a striking email with a nice balance of text and images. Whatever strategy is chosen, the more you test, the better you will become. In short, it is advisable to start off with single variable testing, then once you have found out what works for that element of your email campaign, move through all of the email components until a full understanding has been developed. With competition in the inbox becoming increasingly fierce, a careful testing strategy gives a significant opportunity to improve metrics and strengthen your brand position. More on testing tactics can be found here. SOCIAL For marketers, social media can be a great channel to utilise that s quite often not used to its potential. Although you can use your email marketing to gain a few more likes and followers, on a campaign-to-campaign basis, social media is most effective when you get that message shared. To get these shares your content needs to be share-worthy e.g. an offer that the recipient finds too good not to share with their friends. When you are trying to produce that viral email campaign; ask yourself the question: why would I want to share this with my friends? Another reason some marketers sometimes stay away from social campaigns is because they feel that there is no way of monitoring what you are doing and recording the success of the campaigns. But there are tools available to measure social media ROI. 21 22

KEY TRENDS FOR THE REST OF 2013 The 2012 Benchmarking report identified key trends for mobile campaigns, share to social, responsive email design, targeted and dynamic welcome emails and dynamic content emails. The same trends have been identified in 2013 with a few new ones that we think are important. A RECENT NATIONAL CLIENT EMAIL REPORT RELEASED BY THE DIRECT MARKETING ASSOCIATION (DMA), HIGHLIGHTED THAT 89% OF RESPONDENTS DECLARE THAT EMAIL MARKETING IS IMPORTANT OR VERY IMPORTANT TO THEIR BUSINESSES, AND THIS IS SET TO RISE MOVING FORWARD. DYNAMIC AND RELEVANT CONTENT Don t be left behind by still sending generic messages. Get ahead of your competition by focusing on highly relevant and targeted communications. For example, not segmenting based on gender of the recipient and sending emails about women s clothing would reduce the chances of a male recipient interacting with a brand. To drive that interaction and hopefully convert to a sale or increase footfall into a store, the content must be relevant for the recipient. The way to do this is to create a personal message using dynamic content. To be able to do this you need to firstly have the information available, which is where preference centres come in, with emails sent to existing subscribers, asking them to select their preferences for which types of email they would like to receive. Communicator clients have seen a dramatic improvement in results when preference based content is used. THE POWER OF DATA To be able to deliver dynamic and relevant content emails, you need to have the data capabilities to drive them. Continuing the trend from 2012, the amount of data that is being captured for people, based on their likes and opinions is increasing. This data can be used by your marketing department to help increase ROI by increasing the personalisation you use in your communications. MOBILE AND RESPONSIVE DESIGN Mobile technology is growing, allowing online shopping experiences to become the norm as far as your customers are concerned. The key now is to make sure your email marketing makes online purchasing as easy as possible regardless of the type of device. This growth of mobile has seen many developments in mobile devices and their capabilities, making it more important than ever to ensure that your email messages render correctly across the full range of available email clients and devices. Responsive Design aims to provide an optimal viewing experience for the email recipient with hassle free navigation across a wide range of devices such as Blackberry, iphone, HTC etc. This approach responds to a user s environment/device, using adaptable images and layouts to automatically provide for the optimal resolution, image size and text layout. 48% OF EMAILS ARE OPENED ON A MOBILE DEVICE This is supported by the return on investment (ROI) from email marketing increasing to 21.48 for each 1 spent on email in 2012. For roughly a third of respondents, email marketing accounts for 50% or more of all digital business revenue. 23 24

SOCIAL The ongoing success of social networks also continues to influence email. This influence refers not only to formal, tactical and strategic integration of the two channels, but also to the way social network activity has changed consumer expectations of the nature and style of communications between organisations and their customers. The benefits of integrating social and email are many. Integration has the potential to expand the reach of your marketing messages, to increase the ROI of your email programme, improve your brand awareness and reputation, and allow you to connect with your audience on a number of different channels. RE-ENGAGEMENT CAMPAIGNS RESEARCH SHOWS THAT ON AVERAGE IT S THE SAME PEOPLE THAT WILL ALWAYS OPEN YOUR EMAIL. TYPICALLY, BASED ON INDUSTRY AVERAGE, THIS WILL BE ABOUT 25% OF YOUR MAILING LIST. SO WHAT ARE THE OTHER 75% DOING? Recipients will become unresponsive over time if they aren t engaged with your brand by the content you re sending them. Help yourself, your business and your revenue by trying to reclaim the interest of these unresponsive subscribers. Make them see the real value of your campaigns. Sending your campaigns to the list of subscribers who have opened, clicked and converted in the last 6 months will improve your reputation in the eyes of the ISP s, increase the level of engagement with your brand, and possibly reduce your email campaign spend. The important thing to remember is that you need to change your behaviour in order to encourage your inactive subscribers to change theirs; if you do what you ve always done, your subscribers will do what they ve always done and not open your messages. your emails. By looking at the example below you can see the percentage of subscribers who are not opening the email. New (22.8% Opener Rate) Active (31.2% Opener Rate) Dormant (4.9% Opener Rate) Inactive (2.8% Opener Rate) Long Term Inactive (1.1% Opener Rate) VIDEO IN EMAIL 61.4% OF ALL EMAIL CLIENTS ENABLE VIDEO WITHIN EMAIL Thanks to HTML 5, video in email is now a customer friendly possibility whereas previously it would have depended on the email client you were using as to whether you had a good experience or not. Currently, 61.4% of email clients enable video within email including Apple mail, Outlook.com and Mozilla Thunderbird. Our video within email service is also supported on iphone, ipad and ipod touch, android, HTC and Motorola for the increasing percentage of us who open emails on a mobile device. So what are the benefits of including a video? A recent emarketer study shows that respondents who had used videos in their email campaigns saw real returns on their investment. Video within email has been proven to increase click throughs, read time, email shares and even conversion rates from email communications. A customer who used video within email saw in an A/B split test they improved revenue per email delivered by 55% using video within email. Communicator allows you to see the percentage of people in your mailing list who are engaged and dis-engaged with REACHED UNREACHED SO HOW DID YOU COMPARE? Whether you re flying high above the rest or falling short of industry averages, there s always room to improve your campaigns. Get in touch to find out how Communicator can help you. 25 26

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