Kentico Email Marketing Survey: Only 32% Say Email Marketing Has Improved

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Sep 23, 2013, 09:00 ET

NASHUA, N.H., Sept. 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Kentico Software, a leader in customer experience management, today unveiled the results of a new Email Marketing Survey, the latest installment of Kentico's ongoing Digital Experience research series.

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According to the survey, only 32% of the general public believes email marketers have gotten better over the past five years at emailing them with products, services, or various content that appeals to their interests. 31% of those surveyed believe email marketing has gotten worse, and 36% feel it's remained about the same. (Respondents were asked to disregard emails from non-legitimate companies designed to trick, steal or mislead.)

Marketing Emails: Dead on Arrival?

Kentico's findings suggest reaching customers via email continues to be a challenge—especially in acquiring new targets. An overwhelming 77% are unlikely to welcome an unsolicited email even if it caters to their particular interests. And of the email lists recipients willfully subscribe to, the majority of respondents (36%) said they read about a quarter of the emails they receive. 26% read half of it, 16% read 75% of it, 10% say they read all of it, and 12% read none of it.

Stats for Solicited Email

Most respondents (37%) willfully subscribe to 1-5 email lists. 31% subscribe to 6-10 lists, 14% subscribe to 11-15 lists, 7% subscribe to 16-20 lists, and 5% subscribe to more than 20 lists. Those who subscribe to 6-10 lists tend to read more of their marketing email, with 48% of this segment typically reading 75% of their solicited marketing messages. Of those who willfully subscribe to email lists, most (57%) will stay on a list for a period of 1-3 years. 22% will stay on a list for 4-6 years, 5% for 7-9 years, and 16% for 10 or more years.

One Person's Email = Another Person's Spam

When survey participants were asked why they mark email from legitimate companies as spam, 38% said when companies email them too much, 34% said when emails are unsolicited, 26% said when emails don't contain anything of interest, and only 2% said when emails seem shoddy with poor design and typos.

Calls to Action

Kentico found 45% of those surveyed will perform the action requested in marketing emails about 1-2 times per month. Such actions may include learning more about a product or taking part in a sale. 21% will perform requested actions 3-4 times per month, 8% will perform 5-6 actions per month, and less than 1% will perform 7-8 actions per month. 5% will perform more than 10 actions per month, and 18% will never respond to a call to action.

"Our research shows even as marketers become better at catering to the interests of email recipients, they still face an uphill battle in reaching customers in ways that resonate," said Kentico CEO and Founder Petr Palas. "This means while generating leads via email is still important, new customers must be discovered via other channels, such as social media, search, and more. It also underscores the need to keep customers engaged on a variety of fronts, as even willful subscribers of marketing email tend to ignore much of these messages in their inbox."

The Kentico Email Marketing Survey is the third installment of an ongoing Kentico Digital Experience Research series that was kicked off earlier this year with the Kentico Customer Experience Survey and continued with the Kentico Mobile Experience Survey. Among prior survey highlights: 85% use smartphones to comparison shop, and 44% will never return to sites that aren't mobile friendly. Word of mouth (28%), company websites (25%) and in-store experience (18%) weighed most heavily on strengthening or eroding brand affinity. 69% expressed an overwhelming eagerness in allowing the collection of their personal data in exchange for more customized service.

More than 300 US residents 18 years old and over participated in the Kentico Email Marketing Survey, conducted online during the month of August, 2013.

About Kentico CMS
Kentico CMS is an enterprise Web Content Management System and Customer Experience Management solution that provides a complete set of features for building websites, intranets, community sites and e-commerce solutions on the Microsoft ASP.NET platform, on-premise or in the Cloud. It supports mobile websites, SEO, document management, online marketing tools, multilingual websites, and multisite management, and comes out of the box with 70 ready-to-use modules, 400 configurable web parts, and source code available by request.

About Kentico Software
Kentico provides an affordable, award-winning integrated marketing solution that's easy to use but also highly customizable for powerful real-time customer-centric marketing across multiple channels, on-premise or in the Cloud. Founded in 2004, Kentico is headquartered in the Czech Republic with offices in the US, UK, and Australia. A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with 1,100 digital agency partners, Kentico powers more than 18,000 websites in 90 countries. Customers include Bacardi; Great British Chefs; Gibson; Mazda; Microsoft; Mighty River Power; Run and Become; Sony; Vodafone.