KPI by Segment is the Most Underused Metric by Search Marketers

Marketing Sherpa's latest chart of the week is about the metrics that are underused by search marketers. The data was collected by asking Marketing Sherpa members about 'the most underused metrics in search'

“Marketers with short, impulse-buy sales cycles were quite adamant that immediate sales should be tied to keywords when figuring out conversion...With prices rising steadily, marketers who evaluate search against tangible KPIs will be the ones who will optimize and balance their spending.”

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.