The good news for marketers in JupiterResearch's new “Email Marketing Forecast, 2005 to 2010” report is that more of their e-mails will be delivered. Delivery rates should bump up from 88 percent to 90 percent over the next two years.
“We're starting to see a higher level of sophistication with e-mail marketers. As the sophistication and level of targeting improve, it will help delivery problems,” said David Daniels, research director at JupiterResearch, a division of Jupitermedia, New York.
Meanwhile, marketer spending on e-mail is expected to increase 4.5 percent annually from $885 million in 2005 to $1.1 billion by 2010. The highest growth will be from transactional e-mail, increasing 37 percent over the next five years to $7 million.
Spending on retention e-mail will continue to account for the greatest share of the e-mail market, increasing to $577 million. Acquisition e-mail spending, including newsletter sponsorship, append and co-registration, will grow 4 percent annually from 2005 to 2010 to $518 million.
Business-to-consumer marketers still will account for the majority of e-mail spending, upping their spending 5 percent annually to $897 million by 2010. Business-to-business marketers' spending will grow only slightly by 2.4 percent annually to $206 million in 2010.
Spending on e-mail append services will remain relatively flat, JupiterResearch predicts, because marketers will be “challenged to find a large number of high-quality list rental sources,” the report said.
“E-mail address churn has been at its highest within the last 12 months because of the huge adoption of broadband in the U.S.,” Daniels said. “The challenge for the list brokers is the hygiene of those lists.”
Meanwhile, consumers and marketers should benefit from the expected drop in spam volume. The report predicts that spam will drop 13 percent a year over the next few years.
“ISPs are wise to improve spam filtering and ensure that permission e-mails are not erroneously marked as spam,” Daniels said.
