E-mail marketing spending in the US will increase to $2 billion by 2014, which represents almost and 11% year-over-year growth rate, according to a new forecast report by Forrester Research.
The report, called “US Email Marketing Forecast, 2009 To 2014,” attributed the growth of e-mail marketing to falling CPMs (meaning that ESPs are charging less per e-mail), a higher return on investment, as well as the growth of social e-mail accounts. Because of this growth, in five years consumers will be hit with more than 9,000 e-mail marketing messages a year.
“This means more clutter, so for marketers it means that they have to get much more serious about using the tactics of relevancy like click base segmentation,” said David Daniels, research VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research.
The report also found that retention e-mails will account for more than a one-third of all marketing messages in consumers’ inboxes by 2014. This will be driven by increased list sizes and sending frequency.
As social networks become more primary sources, e-mail will grow, as e-mail is the basis for all social communications, according to the report. To account for this growth, Daniels recommends that e-mail marketers merge the social marketing efforts with e-mail, by overlaying social media reviews within e-mail data.
“While social media has primarily been a tool for personal communications, marketers have to figure out how to bridge the conversation from the e-mail inbox to the social inbox,” said Daniels. “But social is nothing new to e-mail. Share-to-social is just the rebirth of forward-to-a-friend in a way,”
The report also predicts that spending on ad-sponsored newsletters will double over the next five years as traditional print publishers face falling circulation and ad revenue.
