Email Marketing ROI

Email marketing is taking online marketers by storm thanks to the incredible ROI it promises.

“ ... email [marketing] ROI will hit $45.65 for every dollar spent in 2008, more than twice the ROI of other mediums including search and display.” - Datran Media's second annual survey of online marketing professionals (conducted Dec. 2007)

Of all the respondents to the survery:

• 55 percent expect ROI from email marketing to be higher "than any other [marketing] channel
• 67 percent state "email has helped boost sales through other channels."
• 80 percent indicate "email was the strongest performing media buy ahead of search (70.6%) and display (37.6%)."
• Among the lowest ROI generators were mobile (1.2%), RSS (2.4%), Cable (7.1%), Broadcast (10.6%) and Print (16.5%).
• 80 percent send targeted email campaigns
• 82.4 percent expect to increase use of email marketing in 2008 compared to 2007
• 55.3 percent expect email marketing ROI to be higher than other channels in 2008
• 25.9 percent expect email ROI to be 'roughly equal to other channels'
• 71.8 percent think that search complements the email marketing channel followed by display advertising (51.8%), direct (41.2%) mobile (24.7%), broadcast (17.6%) and cable (10.6%)
• 80 percent plan to employ email to send newsletters followed by 78.8% to drive sales, 70.6% to enhance customer relationships, 67.1% to increase upsell or cross sell opportunities, 64.7% to increase brand awareness and/or lift, 50.6% to send transactional messages and 52.9% to send messages to reactive dormant customers.
• 63.5 percent plan on integrating marketing messages in transactional emails in 2008.
• 69.4 percent currently use and/or plan on using an outside vendor for email marketing.
• Of the companies that currently send targeted email campaigns, 63.5% target based on demographics and/or geography, 56.5% target based on actions, 4.12% target based on psychographics or interests and 20% don't send targeted campaigns.
• 90 companies participated in the survey including OgilvyOne Worldwide, Avenue A/Razorfish and Stamps.com
  

Email marketing serves as an excellent way to keep in touch with customers in industries where otherwise the contact would only happen once or twice a year.

Online Display Advertising ROI Effectiveness

According to this chart published by Marketing Sherpa, Online display advertising gets the best ROI.

"The key takeaway for advertisers is that the context in which an ad is served is at least as important as the ad itself. It’s no different than traditional direct marketing; the list is the most important variable in a successful campaign.

An impression is wasted if the consumer is not in the proper state of mind, or simply does not fall into the group of people who would have reason to consider the offer. From an ROI perspective, eliminating wasted impressions, then making a good impression by serving up great advertising, is consistently the best option for advertisers."