For me research is like seminars and events; it’s an opportunity to see what others are thinking, check your understanding and often come away with new ideas. Most of the research I’ve come across recently seems to be collected from either email marketers (users) or service providers. Indeed the email marketing council’s research does just that, survey client attitudes once a year and ESP (service provider) metrics once a quarter.

However this latest piece of research from Emailcenter actually surveys consumers or recipients of email marketing and therefore makes for very interesting reading.

The report provides further evidence amongst its three key findings, along with suggested strategies for improvement and case studies that act as excellent real world examples from leading brands that illustrate the strategies and how they overcame the challenges. For example, a key issue and a debate that has been had on this blog and amongst email marketers is around mailing frequency. The report identifies the recipients thoughts on frequency, the case at the organisation level as to why this happens and how for Toptable decreasing frequency actually led to an increase in sales.
Reading the report I found plenty to agree with, the report is well written and very clearly laid out, with the key findings made very succinctly.

Thanks to Emailcenter for sharing their research with DMA members. To download a copy of the white paper click here (requires log in).  Mark Brownlow from Email Marketing Reports, also picked up on this research and has blogged about it here.

Reminder: if you are a client email marketer then click here to participate in the current survey, which is open to non-members.  

Richard Gibson
RSA Direct