Marketers missing the boat on e-mail testing and tactics, Jupiter says

Many e-mail marketers have under-performing campaigns because they fail to take steps such as segmenting offers to groups of consumers and conducting A/B tests to determine the most effective promotions, JupiterResearch says in a report released this month.

The report, “Effective E-Mail Marketing,” notes that only 40% of marketers regularly employ e-mail testing strategies, and that they generally fail to use sophisticated techniques like customer segmentation, personalization, and frequency tailored to the responsiveness of targeted customers. Only 31% use e-mail click-through data, for example, to tailor e-mail campaigns to the proven interests of segments of customers, Jupiter says.

But marketers will realize higher response rates as they deploy more sophisticated campaigns, Jupiter adds. It notes that marketers who use customer segmentation strategies are nearly twice as likely as those who don’t to realize conversion rates of more than 3%, and it notes that those who e-mail promotions triggered by online customer activity achieve higher conversion rates than do marketers who follow a set policy of e-mailing customers every week.

Jupiter adds that marketers are more likely to exceed average conversion rates of 1-2% when they regularly conduct A/B tests of e-mail promotions. 47% of e-mail testers realize average conversion rates of more than 3%, while 34% of non-testers exceed that average, Jupiter says.