Just over half of respondents said that they will not be taking money from another channel to fund their email marketing, reinforcing the net increase in client spend on email in these organisations.
The survey also reveals that email has allowed marketers to maintain a more frequent dialogue with their prospects and customers, with almost nine out of ten having sent out more messages this year; yet only a fifth of respondents put this down to an increased number of contacts.
Richard Gibson, chair of the DMA Email Marketing Council’s Benchmarking hub, said: “Email is an extremely powerful medium when used alongside other media yet remains the least exploited of all channels.
“Audiences live in a multi-channel world where they are happy to consume messages though a number of different media. Direct marketers need to understand those multi-channel linkages and weave together different on and off-line messages to build compelling, engaging, personal experiences that deliver a healthy return on investment.”
Despite the significant development in the adoption of email, it has not yet caught up with the reach of other direct marketing tools, with companies, on average, having email addresses for only 50% of their database, said the MDA. The majority of respondents gather new email addresses through organic website traffic with offline (paper based) activity accounting for 40% and telemarketing accounting for 31%.
Gibson adds: “It’s encouraging to note that many organisations are taking a multi-channel approach to growing their email databases. We mustn’t underestimate the challenges for many organisations in integrating off-line data capture of email addresses – there needs to be a multi-channel view of the whole customer experience.”
A recent report from JupiterResearch forecast that e-mail marketing spending will grow from $1.2 billion in 2007 to $2.1 billion in 2012 (see E-Mail Marketing Spend To Top $2 Billion by 2012).
Spending on retention e-mail will more than double during that period and account for over half of total e-mail marketing spending in 2012, said JupiterResearch.
In December, Ofcom published research revealing that advertisers in the UK spend more money per person on internet advertising than any other country, at £33.
The second annual International Communications Market Report said that this is twice as much as France, Germany and Italy combined.
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