Retailers continue to ignore Email Best Practices

The medium of email provides retailers with a cost-effective, trackable and accountable way of communicating with prospects and customers. Yet this year’s results from dotMailer’s ‘Hitting the Mark’ benchmark study shows that far too many companies are still getting it wrong and are overlooking some key email marketing techniques that could increase online traffic and sales.

The study assessed emails sent by thirty six UK retailers in April 2010, evaluating each email against a sixteen point list of criteria based on dotMailer’s email scoring matrix and the DMA’s email best practice guidelines, awarding each retailer with a total score out of one hundred. Two new categories of social media and mobile were added to the study in 2010, reflecting the changing nature of recipient behaviour. A concerning finding highlighted in the study is that 73% of the retailers which featured in the 2009 study, achieved lower scores this time round. The average score in this year’s report was sixty, down on last year’s average of sixty seven. In addition from the email campaigns surveyed, only 11% of retailers scored seventy or above.

In terms of retailer positioning in the study, Marks and Spencer were knocked off the top spot by HMV and Republic. Figleaves and New Look, a new entry for this year, came in at joint second place. Harrods, Early Learning Centre and H&M faired worse, scoring under 50%, with the inconsistent delivery of emails across different email clients and mobile devices identified as problematic areas. The study emphasises that through the implementation of some simple changes and improvements, retailers can expect to start seeing some positive results, quickly.

 Four key areas for improvement and tips have been provided which are intended to provide high street retailers with the potential to maximise their campaign returns:

1.  Integration with Social Media & extending brand reach

According to the Econsultancy, although some analysts are predicting that the growing social media presence in the online world is threatening the use of email; I tend to agree with the opposing view that the integration of email and social media in campaigns can attempt to improve the effectiveness of both. For instance email has the potential to increase the awareness of a brands social media presence and encourage recipients to share email content on social networks. The dotMailer report reveals that retailers attempting to do this are scoring on average just two out of thirteen points available. Therefore indicating potential to build on consumer engagement levels and delivering meaningful results such as interactions online, sales and loyalty.

Further ways to extend the reach of email marketing campaigns include the addition of a link which allows recipients to forward emails to friends. The study reveals that very few retails are actually using this feature. Viral and word-of-mouth marketing can also provide lucrative opportunities to spread marketing messages, driving traffic, collecting contact data and increasing revenue at little or no cost to the marketer.

 2. Email Personalisation

The 2009 study criticised retailers for failing to personalise their emails, yet this year’s scores have declined even further. From the thirty six campaigns studied, just three were using personalisation. Even more worrying is the revelation that 33% of the retailers studied collected extra data in the email sign up process, yet only four of them actually used this data to tailor the email content specific to their customers.  Statistics provided in the dotMailer study indicate that opening an email with a personalised greeting can significantly improve both open and click-through rates by engaging the recipient and can also help to establish one-to-one communication. 92% of the emails assessed failed to do this, a significant increase on the 70% in 2009. This is clearly an area where retailers have potential to improve on.

 3.  Email Content, Coding and optimisation

The study revealed that 19% of recipients tend to avoid reading emails which they anticipate is spam and a further 19% perceive an email is spam if it is blank when the images are turned off. There is still more work to be done in this area as only 8% of the emails studied actually displayed correctly in every type of email account. The results in this category indicate that retailers are not taking the straightforward actions required to overcome the risk of their email being mistaken for spam. The dotMailer study indicates that simple steps can increase email open rates by up to 40%. It is recommended that email templates have a good balance of text to images in order to pass through spam filters more efficiently and also ensures that an email is actually readable when images are switched off by the recipient.

 In addition as the usage of various Smartphones is still growing strongly, the likelihood is that more and more customers will be reading their emails on their phones. It is therefore important that marketers monitor emails being sent to mobiles and optimise as required. Top tips include keeping emails brief with clear call to actions along with adding links such as view on a mobile.

 4.  Persuading recipients to take action – the ultimate purpose of email marketing!

The key to success for any email campaign is to help recipients determine who the email is from, making the message instantly clear along with providing any follow up actions required in terms of what is expected from recipients once they have read the email. A third of the retailer’s emails assessed in the study essentially failed to provide clear call to actions. It is recommended that retailers brand names along and call-to-actions are obvious and clear to see, both above and below the page fold in order to drive recipients towards taking action.

Summary

This year’s dotMailer report shows how slow many of the high street retailers are reacting to the need for best practice in their email marketing in order to fully maximise their returns. Email marketing remains a powerful tool in the digital marketing mix in terms of tapping into consumer’s online channels and communities along with using personalised and compelling content to deliver results. Furthermore in terms of building campaigns that remains fresh and relevant email messages must now promote integration with social networks pages and mobile channels. If you require any help or assistance in terms of improving the overall effectiveness of your emails; don’t hesitate to contact us.