Australian retailers are ahead of the curve in using email marketing to engage with customers, but most aren’t optimising it as well as their US counterparts, a Silverpop study has found.
The Email Marketing Study surveyed 100 Australian retailers including high profile major businesses and compared their email programs to top US retailers. Australian businesses still lag behind American retailers in using email to engage with their customers – with only 86 percent communicating with their customers online, compared to 96 percent in the US.
However, Silverpop found that Australian businesses are better at offering a customised service to their e-savvy consumers, being 25 percent more likely to offer preferences during the opt-in stage. Businesses that offer preferences for their email marketing are more likely to maintain a subscription base, as they don’t risk over or under-communicating.
According to Jeff Clark, managing director of Engage Digital, offering preferences to customers for email marketing reduces the risk of over or under-communicating, making it easier to maintain a subscription base. Retailers should allow customers to indicate preferences for sales alerts, new product offerings and how often they would like to be contacted. “This is the best way to ensure recipients remain engaged in, and not frustrated by, email campaigns”, Clark said.
Australian businesses lag behind American online retailers when it comes to offering incentives via email. Whilst 68 percent of US businesses surveyed offered special deals to online customers, only 56 percent of Australian retailers incorporate special offers into their email marketing.
While the e-commerce industry grows rapidly in Australia, retailers should be optimising their email marketing to build deep relationships with customers and attract new customers, Clark advises. “When the messages are highly relevant, results can be profound.”
