Most marketers are still failing to implement simple tips to
boost email response and sales. That’s the conclusion of the
latest Hitting the Mark report from email service provider
Dotmailer. Even more surprising is that the majority of retailers
have not improved on last year’s performance.
In April 2010 Dotmailer’s benchmark study evaluated emails sent
by 36 UK retailers; each retailer was given a score out of 100
based on its performance against 16 criteria. Dotmailer found
that 73 percent of the 30 retailers that featured in the 2009
study achieved lower scores this year.
When it carried out the research last year, Dotmailer analysed
marketing emails from 41 retailers sent in early December, it
found that only half included some sort of viral link, such as
“forward to a friend”-this figure remained unchanged.
However, a new section in the report on social-media marketing
showed that uptake of promoting social media channels such as
Facebook or Twitter in email newsletters was unexpectedly
low-just 17 percent of email campaigns included an “add to
social networks” link.
Retailers took another step backwards when it came to
personalisation and rendering too. Ninety-two percent neglected
to include a personalised greeting in their emails, compared with
70 percent last year and only 8 percent of the emails studied
rendered properly in every type of email account tested, compared
with 20 percent last year. Perhaps the most worrying statistic of
all is that even though email’s primary function is usually to
drive sales, a third of all retailers studied failed to provide a
clear call to action.
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