A new report from The Relevancy Group, sponsored by Return Path, finds that too many marketers lack information that would help them optimize their email programs. Half of the respondents to the survey said they feel their email metrics and audience analysis fall short.
According to the report, 26 percent of marketers say knowing how to optimize their marketing is the top email marketing challenge of 2012, followed by 24 percent who cite analyzing campaign results and 21 percent who point to creative content development. Managing frequency across all channels (20 percent), list turnover (20 percent) and benchmarking email performance to peers (20 percent) are also among the top email marketing challenges.
The Relevancy Group also looked at what measurements are accessible in email marketers’ dashboards. Click-through rates (42 percent); deliverability and inbox placement (41 percent); subscriber, list and audience growth (38 percent); and open rates (37 percent) are among the most accessible measurements. On the other hand, what competitors do when we send email (15 percent), lift on tests vs. control groups (19 percent), attribution of email subscriptions and social followers (20 percent), and conversion rates for advertisers (21 percent) were among the last accessible.
Regarding deliverability and inbox placement specifically, the study found that 41.0 percent of marketers say they can access this metric, while 26.0 percent say they can make a request and get data within 24 hours, 17.0 percent say they can get it but aren’t sure how long it takes, 5.0 percent say they have no idea how to get this data and 11.0 percent say they don’t use this measure.
“There is clearly a lack of understanding about the importance of the inbox delivery metric and the overall positive program impact of even a slight improvement on this measure,” the study notes.
The study also lists the top email marketer priorities for improving programs this year:
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Network
