According to study recently conducted by Forrester Research, entitled “E-mail Marketing Comes of Age”, 97% of consumers and 94% of marketers now use e-mail.
More marketers than last year
These results compare very favourably with those of CMO Magazine’s study carried our last year, which found that 72% of marketers were using e-mail as a marketing channel.
Nevertheless, click-through rates have not varied much over the last four year, remaining at about 5%. Although those customers who do click through also buy, spending on average 138% more than prospects that do not open promotional e-mails.
The study also shows that three out of five people that forward promotional e-mails to friends are women.
Threats to e-mail marketing
The main threat faced by e-mail marketing has nothing to do with spam, delivery, open rates or CTRs. The chief obstacle lies in the widespread ignorance of upper management as to the benefits of e-mail as a marketing tool. Those companies, especially retailers, which choose to shun this channel are loosing an important piece of the action.
