Email Marketing’s Growing Importance in 2015 (5,000 Marketers Can’t be Wrong)

John W Hayes

Email marketing’s currency is on the rise according to a survey conducted by the leading cloud based technology company Salesforce.com.

In a poll of 5,000 marketers, 73% of those surveyed stated that email marketing was core to their business. The survey suggests that marketers are placing more importance on email marketing in 2015 when compared to the previous year.

20% of marketers questioned in 2015 stated: “Our business’ primary revenue source is directly linked to email operations” compared to just 15% in 2014.

When asked: “Why is email core to your business?”, 60% of respondents in 2015 said that email was a critical enabler of products and services (up from 42% in 2014).

Return on Investment (ROI) is key to email marketing’s continued popularity with 53% of those surveyed either stating that email marketing produces some ROI (32%) or significant ROI (21%). Only 3% claimed that email was not likely to produce ROI.

The survey suggests that email marketing’s rise in popularity was connected to burgeoning popularity of smartphones with one-third of marketers claiming their subscribers opened emails on mobile devices at least 50% of the time. Some 59% of marketers planned to increase their email marketing budgets, delivering more email content and a better experience via subscribers’ mobile devices.

Mobile’s impact on the way people view and consume email and the web is also having a significant impact in landing page design with 46% of marketers regularly employing mobile responsive design techniques when building their landing pages. Some 68% of marketers view responsive design as either absolutely critical or very important when planning and executing their email marketing campaigns.

Despite mobile technology’s growth, 23% of marketers were unaware of the volume of emails consumed via mobile devices and 17% said they were struggling to design responsive email campaigns.

How important is email marketing to your organization in 2015? Share your comments below:

This post first appeared on the iContact Email Marketing Blog.

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