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Chart of the week: Discounts, receipts and advanced notice of products/sales are the top performers for email content according to customers, but marketers are not following suit in their email comms

The Data & Marketing Association (DMA) published its Marketer Email Tracker 2020 last week. Combining insights by marketers and customers alike, the report explores email’s multi-faceted role in communicating with consumers across all stages of the customer lifecycle – not just as a transactional channel, but one that can be used to inform and build long-lasting relationships.

Email is customers' top pick of the channels

Research by DMA found that email topped every channel when customers were asked their preference for receiving information, including appointments/reminders, customer service, new products, and tutorials. In this report, email outperformed all other channels listed below: Messenger Post Text Face-to-face Online Phone Social media Email This news is music to email marketers' ears, since this…

Insights from the Data & Marketing Association’s head of insight, Tim Bond, reveals email attitudes and behaviours among demographics over 45 years old

The technological world that we live and work in continues to evolve, seemingly offering new ways to engage customers at every turn. But this excitement over what’s new should not distract marketers from the central channel that still resonates with consumers.

Whether they’re considering a purchase, have just made one or need some help, these latest figures highlight email’s ability to help brands engage across the customer journey.

The DMA’s ‘Consumer Email Tracker 2020’ research revealed that email remains a core channel to attract and engage customers throughout the entire customer journey.

It remains the preferred channel for consumers from pre- to post-purchase and for customer service enquiries.

This is in spite of findings from the DMA’s ‘Customer…

Marketing AI implies the art and science of personalized marketing in an age where creativity and simple data collection are not enough to drive your business forward

Not long ago, the marketing process was seen as a human endeavor perfected through several cases of trial and error. The idea of automation streamlining the marketing process looked like science fiction. But with the dawn of the Digital Age, new technologies are transforming the marketing landscape. One such technology is Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Introducing artificial intelligence

The first breakthrough of AI was in 2016 with the introduction of machine learning. It is basically the next logical step in computing: A program that can figure out things for itself. In other words, it is a program that can reprogram itself. [si_guide_block id="87369" title="Download our Premium Resource – AI and machine learning for marketing" description="The guide aims to help businesses of all sizes to apply to their marketing, focusing…

The best digital marketing research across marketing channels - including SEO, PPC, CRO, social, mobile, martech, email, e-commerce, and UX - to help inform your 2019 marketing strategy

Because the state of digital marketing is always evolving, it is important to keep up-to-date with the latest research in your industry or marketing channel in order to stay ahead of your competition. However, it can be difficult to find the digital marketing research you need to help inform your digital strategy. We first curated these stats in 2017, but during 2018 and 2019, we've been committed to updating this article using the best digital marketing research data sources, which the team at Smart Insights have found helpful and informative throughout the year. Hopefully, this will help you too! [si_blog_banner_cta]

SEO statistics 2019

Total site visits produced by organic search…

With so many emails being delivered each day, how do you stand out and make your email count for your subscribers?

According to Radicati Group, the consumer and business emails sent and received every day will exceed 281 billion in 2018. This is expected to increase to 333 billion by the end of 2022. With so many emails being delivered each day, how do you stand out and make your email count for your subscribers? The answer is RICH MEDIA. [si_guide_block id="10442" title="Download our Premium Resource – Email marketing audit" description="The use of rich media is just one area of your email marketing you should assess. Download our email marketing audit to start benchmarking your skills and creating a plan to take your email campaigns to the next level."/]

What is rich media?

Rich media is a broad range of interactive digital media that show dynamic motion and make use of improved…

Whether you’re buying dedicated solo emails, newsletter sponsorships, or native email ads, email advertising is consistently the king of ROI for generating new leads and customers

Just how much bang for your buck can you expect to get out of email marketing campaigns? According to one study, each dollar invested in email campaigns yields $44 on average in return. Also, consider that 91% of users like getting emails from companies they do business with, and it’s clear why email is the largest source of new revenue for 59% of marketers. One of the most overlooked but best ways to acquire new leads and customers to market to via email is — surprise, surprise — email advertising. That’s because prospects who initially engage with your brand in the email medium tend to purchase at far higher rates in this same medium compared…

Chart of the Week: Q4 2018 saw email engagement stay mostly stable but triggered emails still outperformed BAU messages, despite the lower volume

A huge part of improving email performance is benchmarking against industry standards to see where you are above or below average. The latest Epsilon ‘Email trends and benchmarks report’ takes a look at Q4 2018 to see how emails performed compared to the rest of 2018 and previous years.

Key takeaways

The majority of email metrics for Q4 stayed relatively stable compared to the rest of 2018. Emails that were triggered by specific actions taken by website visitors or customers received fairly strong results while business-as-usual (BAU) emails stayed stable. [si_guide_block id="13013" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Email sequence contact strategy template" description="This spreadsheet provides a template for marketers to create a messaging sequence that supports their business for the range of potential event-triggered campaigns."/] Overall, the fact that BAU…

Creativity and resourcefulness may be the best weapons you can use when it comes to lead generation

Lead generation is a crucial marketing activity as it signals the start of what could be a fruitful relationship with future customers. Unfortunately, leads don’t fall on your lap that easily. Not only are you dealing with competition that will try to be first on your prospects’ radar, but you also need to cater to the changing buying behavior and needs of consumers. Faced with these challenges, your creativity and resourcefulness may be the best weapons you can use. This is where infographics come in handy. Infographics have an artistic appeal to content consumers as they are rich in visuals that pique your target market’s interest in learning more about your brand and its unique value offer.

Infographics as blog posts

To generate leads with infographics, you can post them…

62.26% of customers feel happy and excited to respond to a specially tailored message from the retailer

The personalization of emails is not just limited to sending emails to your customers addressing them by their first names - it’s so much more than that.  You can use personal information like their date of birth, full name and past purchases to create personalized customer experiences. This can be incredibly beneficial as personalized emails are known to increase conversions and retention rates. In fact, 62.27% of customers feel happy and excited to respond to a specially tailored message from the retailer. This shows that you need to send tailored notifications to your customers based on their preferences. Let’s take a look at some examples and the infographic by Post Funnel. This will give you an idea of how to effectively use personalization in…

Which activities improve the results from email marketing

Time is often limited when creating emails and planning marketing automation activities, so it’s useful to focus your activities carefully in order to gain the best ROI. This new research reviews the success factors for email marketing, which is a highly rated channel for ROI. Brands that describe their email marketing programs as successful report generating an average email marketing ROI of 42 to 1, while average email programs report an ROI of 37 to 1. Yet similar to our Email marketing excellence research this research shows measuring the ROI is challenging: Beyond measurement, the research examined a wide range of factors. The visual below is worth reviewing since, as the report details, there are some surprises amongst the ones that were associated with increased ROIs and by some of the ones that weren’t. …