The UK market for email marketing platforms and services was worth £148m in 2005 and will grow by 20% to an estimated value of £178m by the end of 2006.
For comparison sake, the UK market for web analytics was expected to grow to £46m by the end of 2005 says econsultancy. So it is already a significant market then. Certainly at KMP we concur with the upward trend, with our travel, retail and leisure/entertainment clients benefiting from significant activity in recent months.
The trend is also supported by a Revolution 2006 survey of marketing managers and marketing directors, that states that email budgets are on the increase. Some 98.5% of respondents said their email marketing budgets would increase in 2006 or stay the same.
In addition, our experience working with clients has shown a refreshing move towards email marketing becoming more strategic, creative and highly analysed with an ever-increasing demand on improving ROI and understanding what creativity does and does not work.
Remember creativity begins with the subject line. This is the hook. All too often it is forgotten. http://www.clickz.com has some good advice on subject lines. In short, what does not work is long subject lines. Keep it to 40 characters, 50 max. Also lines including exclamation marks and sales promotional language get junked by filters or manually deleted.
Of course creativity only comes into play once the email has been delivered. Or should I say "if " the email is delivered. Large ISPs such as AOL, Yahoo, and Hotmail now run white lists where the senders reputation is verified. And now it is even possible to be voted off white lists through consumer power for bad email etiquette. Hence, the most important factor in good delivery to a consumer inbox is now becoming the reputation of your IP address and domain. Protect this at all costs by working with your email marketing supplier to maintain your reputation on your behalf.
