E-mail Lists Could Benefit From Segmentation

Recent Internet Retailer figures studied by survey software firm Vovici seem to indicate that online retailers who reach their customers through e-mail efforts could benefit from more targeted e-mail lists.

A little over 41% of all respondents to the Internet Retailer survey (which was analyzed by Vovici) indicated that they were experiencing conversion rates of 2.0% or less in their e-mail campaigns.

For virtual merchants in the U.S. 44.3% of respondents indicated that they were experiencing conversion rates of 2.0% or less in their e-mail efforts. A relatively large 49.1% of catalog merchants experienced this range of conversion rates.

Vovici found that 43% of respondents did not segment their e-mail campaigns, which could be the main reason behind the large number of merchants experiencing low sales conversion rates.

MarketingSherpa did their own study which seems to echo this support of segmentation in e-mail campaigns. In their study involving 1,927 participants, 18% of marketers who did not use "advanced tactics" including dynamic content, A/B offer testing, and segmentation by user details experienced click-through rates of 2% or less. Only 5% of marketers who did use these advanced tactics experienced the same range of click-through rates.

Sixteen percent of marketers who did not use advanced tactics experienced click-through rates between 11-15%, compared to 31% of marketers who did use advanced tactics.

Fossil has benefited from segmenting its e-mail list, according to Internet Retailer. Before implementing advanced tactics, Fossil saw an average of about one item in shopping carts at the checkout stage, compared to about 1.5 items afterwards.

E-marketer makes a point that marketers must pay attention to what kind of e-mails are sent to consumers. Sales are best acquired by sending transactional e-mails, which is only sent by about 24% of e-mail marketers in the U.S., according to SKYLIST.

The moral of the story for e-mail marketers is nothing new: understand who your target audience is (i.e. age, sex, purchase history, income) and decide on what kind of e-mail vehicle is best suited to achieve your objective.

Source:

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004890