Review: Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2006, from MarketingSherpa.

 

The 2007 version of this guide is now available. More information here...

 

The thing about email marketing is that you never get to the “end” of what can be done. There are always ways to make improvements in one area or another.

 

Maybe your target is to increase clickthrough rates with better copy. Or to improve open rates. Or to grown your list. Or to try sending email as text messages to wireless phones.

 

All this and more is possible, always. But it helps if you have a benchmark against which you can judge your own performance. It also helps if you know what others are doing, so you can learn some new tactics which have been shown to work by other marketers.

 

This process of continuous learning and improvement is what the latest MarketingSherpa email marketing guide is all about.

 

It’s a hefty guide

 

This guide is huge, detailed and fascinating.

 

You get over 150 pages of solid data and information, including 310 charts and eyetracking heatmaps.

 

In other words, you get the very latest data on every aspect of email marketing, for all the major audiences.

 

The guide shares data collected from 1,927 different online marketers, 11 commissioned private studies and a series of eyetracking heatmaps.

 

So the figures are not based on the experiences of just a few companies. This data represents the combined results and learning of thousands of other companies.

 

As a guide to what benchmarks you should be aiming for, it’s indispensable.

 

Are you getting the very best from your email campaigns?

 

This is a question to which the only honest answer is No. There are always ways in which we can improve our performance.

 

The only trouble is, we are often working in the dark, depending on metrics only from within our own company or organization.

 

But how do you compare with other companies within your industry sector? Which of your metrics are below average, and in which areas do you really shine?

 

The only way you can answer these questions is by knowing the figures...knowing what others in your industry are achieving.

 

What are their open rates? What are their clickthrough rates? Are they delivering emails through IM or wireless? What is their ROI on typical campaigns? How are they growing their lists? What is their unsubscribe rate? Which email clients do they use?

 

You’ll find the answers to these and dozens of other questions in this report.

To give you an idea of what’s covered in this guide, here are the chapter titles:

 

Chapter 1 – Email Basics (Budgets, tactics, testing etc.)

 

Chapter 2 – List Building and Maintenance (List sizes, registration practices, whitelisting, co-registration etc.)

 

Chapter 3 – Email Strategy (email frequency, personalization, multi-channel marketing etc.)

 

Chapter 4 – Email Design and Usability (eyetracking study, domains and email clients etc.)

 

Chapter 5 – Email Response Metrics (open rates, clickthrough rates...B2B and B2C by industry etc.)

 

Chapter 6 – Deliverability (spam, false positives etc)

 

Chapter 7 – Permission Marketing Beyond Email...RSS, IM & Mobile (IM, wireless, blogs, desktop apps, RSS etc.)

 

Concluding thoughts...

 

If you are in any way responsible for email marketing, I would strongly recommend you get a copy of this guide. If necessary, get your boss or a favorite client to buy it for you.

 

But one way or another, get your hands on these figures and findings.

 

Learn more about the Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2006...

 

Also, read my reviews of other marketing reports by MarketingSherpa...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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