Last year in the digital space we saw great focus on audience, data and geo-targetting.
Guess What? We in the EDM space have been focussing on audience, data and geo-targetting for years. For years and years!
In fact EDMs are very contemporary. We’re seeing EDMs as a perfect compliment to performance advertising such as display. This year we’re certainly seeing a growth in EDM. Astute marketers are leveraging display advertising assets to build email creative to create truly integrated display and EDM campaigns.
And we’re seeing significant increases in performance campaigns across lifestyle lists with CPC and CPA, niche data bases, such as business and finance lists, are still driving high conversions when bought on a CPM bases.
The growth we’re experiencing in display advertising has lead to a renaissance in email marketing because of email’s targeting capabilities.
The real proof that EDM is alive and kicking as we move through 2013 is re-booking rates. For us, in the past year we have experienced measurable increases in re-booking rates, indicating EDM is really performing within the performance space.
Findings from the recent email marketing census reveal that the vast majority of responding companies (70%) rate email as 'excellent' or 'good' for return on investment.
In 2013 I believe we will see a consolidation of players in the EDM marketplace.
Moving forward EDM success will be tied to continuous optimisation of performance email campaigns. Testing will become more crucial and testing needs access to more than one list of course - and so can only be practiced with access across numerous lifestyle databases. Alarmingly stats show that less than one third of companies regularly test how their emails will render of different devices.
Audiences are of course at the heart of the future of EDMs. And clients will need to be open to testing text-based creative as well as HTML with different audiences.
Additionally, EDM creative will need to be built to take into account how consumers are viewing emails. No longer are we only viewing our emails on our desktops and laptops . We are viewing emails on tablets and smart phones. Just think how many of us check and return emails away from our desks ... on the run at airports, in the car, and of course waiting for meetings to start – or finish!
Dan Bowden
Head of Email Marketing
Komli