Thirty two percent of marketers either rarely or never track the performance of their e-mail names by source, according to a recent study by e-mail marketing software-on-demand provider ExactTarget.
The troublesome statistic means almost a third of e-mail marketers could be throwing money away on bad sources of e-mail names. Moreover, bad list sources can lead to garbage addresses being introduced into marketers’ house files resulting in deliverability problems.
On the positive side, 28% of marketers said they check the performance of their e-mail names by source on a monthly basis, 14% said they do so on a quarterly basis and 8% said they do so weekly, meaning half of all marketers do so on at least a quarterly basis, according to the study done by ExactTarget in collaboration with Ball State University.
“Marketers who opt for expensive list growth tactics—such as print advertising, paid search, co-registration, and email append—are more likely to evaluate their list sources frequently, but there is still an alarming number of marketers using these tactics who rarely review resultant performance,” said the study.
Not surprisingly, marketers with large lists tend to check the performance of names by source more often than those with smaller lists.
For example, 59% of marketers with lists of 500,000 names or more check their e-mail sources’ performance on at least a monthly basis, according to ExactTarget. Still, an alarming 16% of the same group does so rarely or never, the study said.
At the same time, 31% of marketers with lists of 25,000 names or fewer evaluate their e-mail sources at least monthly, while 38% do so rarely or never. And 32% of list owners with from between 25,000 and 500,000 names evaluate their sources at least monthly while 41% do so rarely or never, according to ExactTarget.
Meanwhile, the most popular list-growth tactic is on-site registration with no incentives, with 83% of marketers with three or more years in e-mail claiming to use it, and 61% of those with fewer than three years experience claiming the use it, according to ExactTarget.
The second most popular list growth tactic is registration during purchase, with 53% of marketers with three or more years in e-mail claiming to use it, and 32% of those with fewer than three years experience claiming the use it, according to ExactTarget.
Also not so surprisingly, different tactics perform differently for business-to-consumer and business-to-business marketers, according to ExactTarget. For example, B-to-B marketers report that using on-site incentives to get e-mail names work better than non-incentivized registrations, according to ExactTarget.
Moreover, tradeshows are the top performing name source for B-to-B marketers, according to the study.
However, while gathering names through inbound call centers is a “must have” for B-to-C marketers, it is an expensive tactic for B-to-B marketers to implement, according to the study.
