Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2009

Businesses seek cost efficient ways to maximize impact and build relationships in what is likely to be a difficult stretch in the global economy. And Email continues to be one of the most used and abused ways that marketers turn to communicate with their customer base. But the only way to increase your email performance is to market responsibly and effectively. MarketingSherpa’s 6th Annual Email Marketing Benchmark Guide offers practical data to improve your budgeting, list growth, deliverability, testing, and ROI.

What makes this year’s edition so relevant is that it offers practical answers to tough questions. When it’s budget time you need to know how to get customers and keep them and you need to show whether your response rates are comparable to others. Plus since email is growing internationally, a new Special Section tells you what you need to know about different countries’ regulations and what works in those countries.

Email is read, and the 2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide will provide you with insight on how consumers are viewing emails, how they perceive email and with 8 new eyetracking heatmaps you’ll find out how they “see” your emails.

And if you are looking for inspiration or exciting ways that marketers have succeeded in their email marketing, we offer special 8“Notes From The Field” Case Studies.

Practical Answers To Tough Questions

As an email marketer you are constantly asking yourself, or being asked tough questions like “What tactics get the best ROI?” The Email Marketing Benchmark Guide will not only tell you which ones get the best ROI, but also will tell you which one gets the worst. Furthermore you’ll find out which tests are actually the most effective in determining the ROI of your email tactics.

You Are Not Alone

It’s good to know what challenges your fellow email marketers are facing. What’s invaluable is finding out what works to overcome them. Email Marketing Benchmark Guide will show how economic uncertainty is affecting marketing budgets and provide 9 “challenges to success in Email Marketing” charts that apply to large, medium and small B-to-B or consumer businesses.

It’s Budget time

How are your email campaigns viewed at budget time? Email Marketing Benchmark Guide tells you what corporate attitudes are toward email, as seen through the prism of perceive email effectiveness. Also if you think your budget needs an increase, even in these tough times, you’ll find all the data you need to show why your size company need the money you’re proposing.

Response Rates ARE comparable

If someone is giving you a hard time about your email response rates, or if you’re someone who wants real-life goals on how you can improve those rates, the Email Marketing Benchmark Guide has all the charts and data you will ever want to compare your clicks, deliverability and conversion rates to the rest of the world.

Subscribers – How do you get them…and keep them?

What makes consumers more likely to subscribe to emails? Email Marketing Benchmark Guide has a Special Report on “Consumers and Email: Growing Lists.” You’ll get a true sense of consumers’ Email profiles, their willingness to opt in, and what would drive them to opt in. Plus you’ll see why they unsubscribe.

Viewing Emails

You know this all too well – not everyone sees your email the same way. Email Marketing Benchmark Guide gives you the charts and stats of which preview panes are most and least common among consumers, and how much that’s changed during the last two years. Plus, and this is something your designers may not want to know, but you’ll find out the truth about how often images are blocked.

Email Demographics and How Consumers Perceive Email

How do American’s view email as a service? We surveyed 1,438 representative Americans to find out what kinds of emails people are receiving. The Email Marketing Benchmark Guide breaks it down by income, gender and a range of other demographic characteristics. And because you often get asked how email stacks up against postal mail and the telephone, we have those answers as well (Spoiler alert: The answers will surprise you.)

Short vs. Long, Overcoming Image blocking - 8 Eyetracking Heatmaps

How do people view text and image emails? This year’s explorations in eyetracking email will give you answers on how to overcome the effects of image blocking and the optimal way to format text or text-like emails. Plus you’ll find out if shorter is better for product heavy emails.

Tracking The Growing International Market

Roughly a quarter of large emailers report that over 15% of their names are from overseas but nearly half aren’t tracking this metric. In a new Special Report on
International Email you’ll get an overview of regulations effecting international email marketing plus you’ll find out:

• How companies perceive and prioritize international email
• Country specific information about deliverability and what works
• How leading-edge emailers are customizing email for international delivery

Increase Your Email Performance

Our new 12 Point Plan to Increase Performance covers practical ways to raise opt-ins, open rates and click through rates. You’ll find out Best Practices on subject line length, design, segmentation, use of links and more. As more and more of your competitors are flooding your customers’ email boxes, you want to make sure yours stands out.

Are you using or abusing Email: Spam Complainers Survey

How consumers are seeing Spam is changing. What many of them thought was not Spam in 2006 they now regard as Spam in 2008. This Special Report tells you whether they see your emails as Spam or not (keeping you hones on whether you are abusing your email list), and that information alone can help you as you plan your future email campaigns.

Improve Your Results with Practical Solutions from Real-Life Case Studies

In addition to all of the practical interpretations of the date in the Email Marketing Benchmark Guide, you can read 8 special “Notes From The Field” Case Studies.

• Find out about the test program that a tech firm used to increase opt-ins ten fold.
• Learn how out how testing the timing of an email campaign resulted in a15.6% increase in click-throughs.
• Discover how a viral email campaign produced 100% response. You read this right, a 100% response rate.
• Find out how embedded video increases a UK entertainment company’s conversions by more than 50%.