Email marketers no longer need shoot in the dark

This new data will provide vital strategic weight to email marketing campaigns, eliminating much of the guess work from the process.

Everlytic contracted Effective Measure to provide insights into how South Africans engage with their inboxes for the Demystifying the Inbox study. Five thousand one hundred and ninety people participated in the survey, revealing the trends and patterns in how they read and respond to emails.

In addition, Everlytic carried out an analysis on over 1 billion emails that it sent out on behalf of its clients across multiple industries. The resulting Benchmark Report provides insights into what people do with marketing emails when they receive them.

"We conducted these studies after hearing the frustrations of many marketers about the lack of local email marketing data that would help them to make strategic decisions about their own campaigns, or measure effectiveness against some established benchmark," says Walter Penfold, managing director of Everlytic. "As far as we know - and we're pretty sure - the Benchmarking Report is the first study of its kind to be done in South Africa by a South African company."

A full copy of both reports was made available to all delegates at the breakfast launch, with key findings painting a clear picture of how South Africans respond to emails.

Key findings from the Benchmark Report:

• On average, of marketing emails that are sent, the average unique open rate is just under 25%.
  
• Of those who open marketing emails, an average of 12% click on links in the mails.

Key findings from the Demystifying the Inbox Report:

• Reading emails is the first or second thing that 84% of people do as soon as they go online. Facebook has overtaken news as the second most popular thing that people do when going online.

• 65% of people use email to share information, compared with 47% on Facebook and 50% on mobile messengers like Whatsapp.

• 60% of people prefer to get news via email than over any other channel.

• 61% of people use their mobile phones to read email, compared to 53% in 2012. 23% use tablets for email compared to just 6% three years ago.

• In 2012, 91% of people felt their inboxes were manageable, and this year, that figure has increased to 93%.

• An email is far more likely to be opened if the recipient recognises the sender and if it is addressed to the recipient by name. (65.72% - "I recognise the from name", 49.82% - "enticing subject line", 53.71% - "refers to me by name".)

• 63% of people surveyed prefer to receive promotional messages via email, 6% prefer Facebook and 8% said via a messaging platform and 12% indicated SMS. These figures also showed that as the recipients grew older, their preference for email increased.

• However, the report also revealed that the young are now using email more, with 65% of people under the age of 20 using it regularly.

• Three years ago, 46% of people said that they had purchased something as a result of seeing it in an email; today 64% say that they are influenced to purchase by emails.

• 37% of women subscribe to newsletters to enter a competition, while only 22% of men do.

• 87% of people want to receive invoices and statements on email.

"It is immediately clear how valuable this kind of information is to marketers," says Penfold. "For instance, it's now possible to assess the success of a campaign based on open rates and make adjustments if they are below the benchmark. We now know that it is vital to design emails for mobile access. And we know that if we want to reach a youth market, that email is an effective channel to do this."

If your company would benefit from the wealth of information contained in these reports, contact Everlytic on 011 447 6147 or visit their website www.everlytic.com.

About Everlytic

Everlytic is the one true integrated email, mobile and social communications tool in South Africa. We've helped great companies connect people to content through world-class, web-based software.