When creating pan-European campaigns, marketers should be mindful
of the channel they use to communicate with potential customers.
In a study into how European consumers engage with brands through
online channels, email services provider eCircle
found a significant divide across the continent.
The results show that multichannel communications, such as social
media combined with email, were the most popular in the UK, Spain
and Italy. These consumers were more willing to interact with
brands through both social media and email and were heavy users
of social-media channels. Take the UK, for example, where one
third of social network-users are fans or followers of a company
or brand.
In contrast, consumers in Germany, France and the Netherlands
were much more email-oriented, with more than a third only
contactable through email. In the Netherlands, for instance, 40
percent of respondents said they could only be reached for online
marketing purposes via email marketing, compared with only 11
percent of Spanish respondents.
Not surprising, the most popular social network was Facebook,
with an average 88 percent of respondents using it. In the
Netherlands, Facebook is significantly less popular, with the
majority of consumers using local network Hyves instead. The
German market is also fragmented–60 percent of consumers use
Facebook, but 50 percent use VZ network and 36 percent use
We-kennt-wen.
The report, conducted with Mediacom Science, analysed more than
5,000 responses to reveal the key differences between UK,
Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. Overall,
across the six countries, email marketing remained the most
popular channel of digital communication. An average of 83
percent of consumers in the UK, Germany, France, Netherlands,
Spain and Italy subscribed to marketing newsletters. What this
highlights, says eCircle, is that email marketing as a customer
communications tool is still going strong despite the apparent
rise in popularity of social networks.
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