E-mail marketing will increase in 2008, according to Datran Media, which found that 82% of the marketers surveyed said that they plan to increase their use of e-mail marketing in 2008.
Datran Media's second annual survey of online marketing professionals, conducted in December 2007 with more than 2,000 marketers including employees of OgilvyOne Worldwide, Avenue A/Razorfish, Stamps.com, The Knot Inc. and QVC, asked marketers about the online channels that have an impact on their business. Despite the sharp rise in e-mail, consumers need not be wary, as marketers are getting more sophisticated.
“If 82% said that they were increasing sales 10 years ago, I would be frightened, but today more firms are shifting their offline marketing to the online space and are sending more targeted messages,” said Lana McGilvray, VP of marketing at Datran Media.
Interestingly, e-mail marketers are targeting mainly by geography and demographics; however, according to McGilvray, more will be using more complex behavioral targeting within e-mails in 2008.
The survey also found that 67% of respondents said that e-mail has helped boost sales through other channels. “It looks like there was a bigger push for integrating these channels, rather than having them fall into silos,” McGilvray added.
Search is the favored channel for complementing the e-mail channel with more than 80% of marketers sending e-mail campaigns in conjunction with search. In addition, 80% of respondents said that e-mail was the strongest performing media buy ahead of search and display.
The study also found that 55% of the respondents expect ROI from e-mail to be higher than any other channel. This comes from a number of companies that spend large dollar amounts on TV and other broadcast mediums.
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