As reported on our sister site, The Marketing Map, Harte-Hanks have released the results of their email delivery survey for 2010.
Based on an analysis of 2.8 billion emails sent during 2010 (which is a big number whichever way you look at it) the results were:
- Delivery rates averaged 95%. a slight improvement from 2009.
- Open rates were 15%, down from 26% in 2009.
- Click rates remained steady at 3%.
- Bounce rates were 5%, besting 2009’s 7% bounce rate.
Apart from the open rates (and there were specific reasons given for this fall) the results are positive and demonstrate how email marketing is improving, thanks to adherence to best practice guidelines.
With email marketing an incredibly popular B2B and B2C platform it’s good to measure your own performance against these 2010 figures and see where you are better than the average, or below it.
If your email marketing isn’t measuring up, or delivering poor results, then telemarketing can help boost your performance, reduce email ‘wastage’, and improve customer satisfaction and response rates.
Outlined below, are the ways in which telemarketing improves your email campaigns
Boost email delivery rates
If people don’t receive your emails they can’t act upon them. Every bounced email represents a lost opportunity to sell your products or engage with customers.
Reasons for non-delivery can vary. Maybe the adress was entered incorrectly in to the mailing database, maybe the recipient has changed email provider, or even their name (for example when getting married), in the business world people move jobs and so points of contact within organisations change.
Data cleansing boosts email delivery rates by contacting your mailing database and establishing the correct email address for each person. The cleanse can be done before the email campaign to reduce the number of emails that don’t reach the right recipient, or you can conduct a post-campaign cleanse, contact the bouncees and prevent it happening again.
Of the two approaches, the best is to call everyone before the campaign is run. Once an email has bounced you’ve lost the opportunity to reach them and potential sales have been lost.
Calling before every email is time, and cost, prohibitive and the recommended solution is to run a regular campaign of data cleansing at regular intervals, say once a quarter, which then updates the email marketing database with any changes.
Keeping emails relevant
In the Harte-Hanks report, the drop in open rates between 2009 and 2010 was attributed, mostly, to a change in emphasis from insurance clients. Previously insurance emails tended to be customer service based, however in 2010 insurance companies started to use email marketing as a sales tool to attract more customers.
This changeover saw open rates fall dramatically, as people went from receiving highly relevant messages that matched their own needs, to content that was focussed on encouraging them to buy more products.
There’s a lesson here for all email marketers. Give people relevant content and they’ll interact with your messages, give them things they don’t want and they’ll turn away quickly.
Deep analysis and data mining of email statistics helps to uncover what people want from your messages, with extensive A / B testing to examine all possible options. An easier way is to call them and ask.
A telemarketing campaign to determine what email messages people prefer, and honouring their choices, will lead to better open and click rates for emails, and more in-depth engagement with customers.
Integrating telemarketing works
Integrating telemarketing with email campaign planning improves the reach and effectiveness of those campaigns. In addition, establishing and adhering to customer’s contact preferences is an effective part of a relationship marketing strategy, improves loyalty and encourages long-term repeat business.