Larisa Bedgood
Email is one of the lowest costing and most effective channels available today. Email marketing was ranked as the best channel in terms of return on investment according to Adestra’s Email Marketing Industry Census. Revenue from email increased by 28% in one year and 68% of companies rated the channel as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’.
Here are some other great statistics on why email still reigns supreme:
- Email marketing yields an average 4,300% return on investment for businesses in the United States. (Direct Marketing Association)
- Companies using email to nurture leads generate 50% more sales-ready leads and at 33% lower cost. And nurtured leads, on average, produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities compared to non-nurtured leads. (Hubspot)
- For every $ 1 spent on email marketing, the average return on investment is $ 44.25. (ExactTarget)
- Email conversion rates are three times higher than social media, with a 17% higher value in the conversion. (McKinsey & Company)
- Email is nearly 40 times better than Facebook and Twitter at acquiring customers. (McKinsey & Company)
The research clearly supports email as a great marketing channel. However, there is a catch. If you aren’t managing your email address data, you may as well hang up your hat on generating results with email marketing programs. According to Experian’s recent Email Data Quality Report, many businesses struggle to maximize their email success. The reason? Poor email data management.
Data Decay – When Good Data Goes Bad
Data ages at an average rate of 2% per month, which means that over a year, you can expect 25-30% of your contact data to go bad. The rate for B2B data decay is even higher. According to research by Biznology, B2B data decays at a rate of just over 5% per month, which equates to 70.3% a year.
The Biznology research revealed that:
- 65.8% title and/or job function change
- 41.9% address change
- 42.9% phone number change
- 37.3% email address change
- 29.6% of individuals changed companies
- 4.6% of the companies changed their name (such as in the case of a merger or rebranding)
- 3.8% name change (for example, women changing their name upon marriage/divorce)
Data not only decays, but human error when entering email addresses is another big factor for undeliverable and bounced emails. The Experian research discovered that 92% of companies face challenges when collecting email addresses, the biggest being human error.
Companies continue to rely on email is an important digital channel for communicating with customers and prospects. Unfortunately, the majority of these companies do not have a consistent way to ensure these emails stay fresh and deliverable.
Clean Up the Mess with Email Append & Validation Services
By now it is pretty obvious that your email database should be consistently maintained. One of the quickest ways to do this is by using an email append and validation provider. Using a third-party email provider, you can quickly clean up email addresses as well as append missing emails to your file.
Not all email append services are created equal. When shopping for services, look for a provider who uses a rigorous validation process to identify addresses known to be associated with spam traps, invalid emails and domains, role accounts, complainers, known hard-bounces, etc. Be sure the provider’s email database is also updated frequently to ensure you are getting the most accurate data available.
Many email providers also provide reverse email append services. If you’ve collected customer email addresses without additional important contact information, names, postal addresses and phone numbers can be appended. Known complainers and bad or fraudulent email addresses can also be flagged.
By making some simple changes and using the services of a third-party provider for maintenance, email marketers can score big and truly maximize their email marketing success!
To learn 3 more ways on how to increase conversions and revenue from your email marketing, download this free guide.
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