According to a new survey from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), which polled 250 senior B2B and B2C brand marketers, more than one in three businesses are unable to calculate their return on investment (ROI) from email marketing.
In contrast, some 60% firmly believed they were able to calculate the exact revenue earned from email campaigns. While 34% of respondents stated they do not know what proportion of their revenue came directly from email marketing, nine in ten companies agreed that the channel was either “very important” or “important” for their business.
The importance of email marketing was well illustrated by the fact that for two in three businesses email made up more than a third of their digital business. Fo approximately a third of the organisations surveyed, email accounted for at least 50% of their total digital revenues.
Of those who were able to calculate the ROI from email marketing, nearly half said they achieve a return of between £1 and £10 for every pound spent. A further 20% of respondents generate more than £51 for every £1 they spend, the DMA found. On average, businesses reported £21.48 ROI from email marketing, based on an average return of £55 in the top category.
Meanwhile, more than half of the respondents predicted that their email marketing budgets will increase, against just 5% who planned to cut costs in that area. The most frequently cited obstacles for achieving the set marketing goals were lack of internal resource (54%) and budget restrictions (38%). Other barriers to business were internal process (30%), in-house technology (28%) and lack of data (27%).
