Happy birthday, email!
Email celebrated its birthday in Germany on Sunday! 30 years ago, on August 2, 1984, Michael Rotert — then head of the computer science department at the University of Karlsruhe, now CEO of the Association of the German Internet Industry eco — received the first e-mail in Germany officially welcoming him to CSNET, a US network for communication between scientists. Michael Rotert could be reached back then at the address “rotert @germany” (Interview on Deutschlandfunk / Article in FAZ).
To celebrate the day, Publicare has put together some interesting facts and figures about email marketing in 2014!
More than 4 billion email accounts for the first time in 2014?
E-mail has long been part of everyday life. The Radicati Group counts in its current Email Statistics Report For 2013 around 3.9 billion email accounts worldwide, of which around 76% are used privately and 24% for business. According to the report, the number of email addresses is expected to exceed 4 billion for the first time this year. For 2017, the report even predicts growth to over 4.9 billion accounts worldwide. This corresponds to an average annual growth of around 6% from 2013.
Email addresses are no longer used exclusively to deliver business or private messages from colleagues, friends and family. Rather, they are too “digital IDs” has become a link for all online activities. They are used to register and identify yourself: in online shops, on social networks, in support forums, on search engines, etc.
Consumers in Germany Use according to the Publicare email study 2013 especially German email providers to receive their newsletters, etc.
Email marketing 2014: Email as a “digital glue”
At the beginning of our decade, the debate about the future importance of email marketing was fuelled primarily by the steadily growing use of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Keywords such as “email fatigue” made the rounds, sometimes declaring the death of email marketing. For 2014, Gartner predicted a massive loss of importance of the e-mail communication channel in favor of social channels in 2010:
By 2014, Social Networking Services wants to replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.
In fact, it turned out differently. In the New York Times David Carr therefore recently rightly titled: “For Email Newsletters, a Death Greatly Exaggerated.” The push medium email is discovered as a central link, as an effective linchpin between various channels and touchpoints, as effective traffic generator and conversion catalyst, which enables targeted lead nurturing measures, ensures a uniform customer journey, actively ensures customer loyalty and acts as a bracket for eCommerce (see Adzine magazine, for example). Auf whatcounts.com Christopher S. Penn correctly blogs:
Some podcasters are wondering why their shows haven't grown substantially since 2008. Some social media practitioners are wondering why attention is so fleeting and they can't hold onto an audience. Some bloggers are wondering why their blogs are not growing a significant loyal base. There's a reason that WhatCounts has promoted this expression for a long time: email marketing is the digital glue that holds together so many different marketing channels.
In short: The more options the online channel offers, the more important the email becomes as integrative push medium for the success of the entire digital marketing strategy.
How many cross-channel channels are there really?
E-mail can serve as a medium for tailor-made, personal communication with customers and interested parties — and as an integrating factor for marketing. But how much cross-channel integration is there really?
According to the 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report by MarketingSherpa Does 75% of the companies surveyed have a integration between email programs and website activity. Only 56% of the companies surveyed integrate the social media channel into their email marketing strategy and only 35% integrate their blog. Not to mention offline channels.
That both the ROI Email marketing will increase in percentage terms and so will the share of Email marketing budgets of the total marketing budget, however, 64% of the companies surveyed expect. On the other hand, only 2% expect budgets to fall in percentage terms and a falling ROI.
As obstructive factors When dealing with their respective top email marketing challenges, more than half of the respondents cite insufficient human resources and expertise (52%), followed by difficulties in integrating email data with other systems (42%) and a lack of ability to create relevant content at a consistent and reliable level (32%).
Here's to the next 30 years!
In 2014, email marketing is more alive than perhaps ever before. And not that spite social networks, blogs, etc. but also and especially That's why. Tweets and Facebook posts now have their own place in the digital marketing strategy. For example, they can spread virally and thus reach groups of people who cannot be reached via email. E-mails, on the other hand, have their own advantages: Contacts can be addressed individually and personally — and their response can be followed precisely. Chris Lake proposed a new conversion metric in this context years ago: from fan to newsletter subscriber and from newsletter subscriber to customer.
Beyond the social media universe, however, emails offer many other opportunities in the area of customer acquisition, customer retention and customer recovery that cannot be provided by any other medium. Personal product recommendations and loyalty vouchers via Facebook? Personal event invite via Twitter? Multi-level reactivation campaigns on the blog? Hardly imaginable. Or in the words of Kate Kiefer Lee in the New York Times:
People get more excited about the newer technologies, but the nice thing about email is that it doesn't go away. It sits in your inbox and you have to do something with it.
At Publicare, we're looking forward to the next 30 years of email and email marketing!
