Email marketing news

Survey: bad targeting is turning consumers off

An Australian survey recently released by Experian has found that 59 per cent of consumers have stopped engaging with four or more brands as a result of poorly targeted communications. The report, titled ‘The future of multichannel marketing: marketer and consumer perspectives,’ displays the broken relations between marketers and consumers and highlights what marketers could do to minimise these poorly targeted communications.

8 per cent of Australian consumers have stopped engaging with 20 or more brands and 27 per cent have created a new email address because they receive too many of these poorly targeted emails to their old address and see this as the only way of being rid of it.

Fortunately, many email marketing specialists are taking heed of this – shown by the majority, 89 per cent of marketers who are now using a strategy to segment customers in some way. 69 per cent of those in the email marketing industry are becoming more selective about the channels used to engage with their customers. Over half of Australian email marketing specialists saw the levels of irrelevant marketing material as a challenge in getting their own email campaigns noticed.

Whilst many marketers clearly recognise the disparity between targeted and non targeted email marketing, with the volume of non targeted email, a proportion are still not applying their knowledge in the right way.

It might be helpful to recognise that 70 per cent of consumers see giveaways or incentives as one of their favourite ways of engaging with a brand, followed by receiving direct mail from a brand – 60 per cent.

Email marketing communication was listed as the favoured communication channel by 46 per cent of consumers with 42 per cent favouring on and offline advertising. Interestingly, 91 per cent of marketers and 85 per cent of consumers believe that a company’s website is the most important source of information about a brand or product. Email marketing could be the crucial link in getting consumers on to that website.

With email marketing still the front runner as consumers’ favourite communication method, 52 per cent of marketers plan to increase their email marketing investment over the next 12 months. This is compared to 47 per cent of marketers who plan to increase online ad spend and 36 per cent planning to increase spend on print advertising.

Matt Glasner, General Manager of Experian Marketing Services comments: “Marketers are working hard to ensure their messages are heard. However, our research highlights that there is still a huge opportunity for marketers to further understand how and when consumers want to engage across all channels, including social media.

“Information overload is a challenge for the industry. As we move deeper into an era of multichannel marketing, marketers need to be more selective in their communications and deliver them in a way that is personally relevant to the audiences they are targeting.

“The big opportunity over the coming year is to apply the clever consumer segmentation that is already being used, to create tailored social media campaigns which talk to the needs of their customers. This is an important conversation for marketers to get right over the next 12 months which, in turn, will generate greater cut through and start to establish the channel as a truly valued and trusted information source.”