Email Is the Preferred Channel for Permission-Based Promotional Messages
According to “The 2012 Channel Preference Survey” from ExactTarget, nearly 8 out of 10 consumers prefer to receive permission-based promotional messages via email. Direct mail was a distant second.
ExactTarget identified six factors that dictate channel preference for consumers: content, immediacy, accessibility, privacy, formality and initiation.
The survey found that 45 percent of respondents use email most frequently for personal written communications (down from 66 percent in 2008), followed by 36 percent who said text messages. Email was a more popular answer among users 25+ years old, while text messages were more popular for users 34 years old and younger.
Posting messages on Facebook was the third most popular answer with a 12 percent response overall, followed by direct mail with 2 percent, instant messaging with 2 percent, messaging app on a cellphone with 2 percent, posting messages on Google+ with 1 percent and posting messages via personal websites or blogs with 1 percent.
When it came to choosing their preferred channel for permission-based promotional messages, 77 percent of overall respondents chose email (up from 72 percent in 2008), followed by 9 percent who chose direct mail, 5 percent who chose text messaging on a cellphone, 4 percent who chose Facebook, 2 percent who chose telephone, 1 percent who chose Twitter and 1 percent who chose mobile apps.
The fact that email is both consumers’ top form of personal written communication and their preferred form of direct marketing puts to shame any proclamation that email is “dying” with consumers. “Evolving
