Newsletters Rank Third in E-Mail Usage

Newsletters may not be the top e-mail marketing activity. But they’re a solid number three, according to a new survey by Direct and Multichannel Merchant magazines.

Of 238 direct marketing firms surveyed, half send e-zines. In contrast, only 26% use e-mail for invoicing and 19% to build retail traffic.

But all these things take a back seat to the driving of Web traffic. E-mail is used for this by 66.5%.

Ranked a close second at 65.5% is the sending of information about the company and its products. And almost half use e-mail to build CRM through promotions or other means.

RSS does not seem to have caught yet with direct marketers. Of those who send e-mail newsletters, only 14% say they make it available, compared with 54% who don’t and 32% who don’t know.

How do the participants measure e-mail performance? Over 50% do it through clickthrough rates, and 40% measure conversion rates and removes/unsubscribes. Ranked fifth is open rates.

B-to-B firms were less likely than their B-to-C outfits to measure any of these things.

One disturbing finding is that 11% of those surveyed have no formal permission practices. That includes 7% of all consumer marketers and 39% of their B-to-B counterparts.

But 32% use a single opt-in and 14% a double opt-in. Another 16% offer an opt-out.

Over 60% customize e-mail, most often in the salutation. Authentication is done by over half of those who send e-mail from inhouse servers.

Meanwhile, 41% of the firms surveyed will increase their e-mail budgets this year. Over two thirds of the B-to-C respondents plan to do so.

How do they broadcast messages? Of those surveyed, 32.% do it inhouse only and 20.7% through service bureaus only. Another 29.6% use a mixture of both. B-to-B marketers are more likely to manage their e-mail programs inhouse.

Direct and Multichannel Merchant are published by Prism Business Media, which also publishes the Chief Marketer, E-Centric and MarketingROI e-mail newsletters.