Marketing E-Mails Are on Upswing in Britain
The number of marketing e-mails sent in the United Kingdom in the third quarter of 2004 increased 29 percent over the second quarter, according to the Direct Marketing Association (UK) Ltd.'s E-Mail Marketing Council's National E-mail Benchmarking Report.The findings were released July 21. The survey is conducted quarterly by independent benchmarking firm tank! to let the council analyze industry trends and highlight areas for development and improvement in e-mail marketing.
The greatest improvement in overall response rates was in business-to-consumer retention, the report said, potentially due to better segmentation and targeting.
The report also found that 100 percent of the DMA UK member respondents claimed spam was hurting e-mail marketing, and 15 percent reported having an occurrence of Internet crime in the quarter.
Though feedback from the survey suggests that deliverability has generally remained static, there were improvements in soft bounce rates (decreasing from 4.32 percent to 1.77 percent) and ISP filtering (reducing from 5.27 percent to 1.43 percent).
These improvements could be linked to better ISP relations, better list hygiene and better targeting.
Comparing quarters two and three, the council said, companies still don't track conversion rates, an area that needs to be addressed in order to understand the true return on investment provided by e-mail marketing. The council will address the issue in the coming months.
