Email Marketing Study Results

MarketingSherpa has spent a lot of time over the past few weeks talking email marketing, partly because they just released their Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007 and partly because they really want to dispel some of the talk that email marketing is dead.  The Benchmark Guide includes research data from more than 3,500 marketers sharing real-life data on their email campaigns.

On December 19, 2006, MarketingSherpa President Anne Holland and Research Director Stefan Tornquist held a conference call on some of the new results from the study.  Yesterday, the company released a transcript of the conference call along with a PDF version of the accompanying PowerPoint presentation and a recording of the call in MP3 format.  After printing the PDF I started reading the transcript of the conference call and, before I knew what had happened, I'd read the entire thing.

The presentation is great.  I haven't listened to the MP3, so I can't say anything about that.  But reading the transcript and following along with the presentation was extremely informative.  Holland and Tornquist walk you through each slide in the presentation step by step, detailing everything from the most exciting results to how the data was collected.  Some of the highlights of that data includes:

• The overwhelming majority of marketers feel that the impact of email is increasing (example)
• Email list growth averages between 22 - 37% annually (example)
• Engaging copy offers the highest ROI (details)
• Content is not always the trigger that causes email to get blocked by ISPs.  In fact, many base their filtering decisions solely on the reputation of the sender (details)
• People click on email content even when that content isn't clickable (details)
• Best estimates are that 30% of users automatically see images in email;  of the rest, between 35 - 83% active image viewing, depending on the sender
• 81% of marketers are not allocating resources for mobile marketing in 2007.  (Contrary to popular prediction, I've been saying for a while now that 2007 will not be the year for mobile.  More proof right here)

Those are just the highlights of the presentation.  I strongly suggest downloading the presentation slides and at least reading the transcript.  If you're an audiophile give the MP3 file a try.  There's a ton of information discussed and you can really get the most out of the presentation slides with the accompanying explanation.

Be a Guest On The David Lawrence Show and Online Tonight Radio Show

Speaking of audiophiles, MarketingSherpa has also posted an interview with David Lawrence, the host of Online Tonight and the David Lawrence Show.  If being a guest on one of Lawrence's shows appeals to your sense of fame, the folks at Sherpa have provided tips straight from the horse's mouth… so to say.  And with 4.1 million regular listeners, that sense of fame could definitely find an audience.

The show deals with culture, technology, and the merging of the two.   Topics range from interviewing spammers to online romance and deals with real people and their use of technology in real life.  If you want to get on the show, there are a few important things to remember:

• Get to know Lawrence's audience
• Finding a way on to his bad side will help get you on the show (he apparently likes to debate)
• Take a call from his booking agent seriously (she apparently doesn't like to be forgotten)
• Pet peeves include not knowing the format of the show, wasting time, and generic story pitches

The full interview has a lot more information about getting on the show.  From the way it sounds, a lot more people get turned down than offered invitations.  If you give it a try, best of luck!