Top struggles for email marketers

According to a recent MarketingSherpa report email marketers are banking on email; on average email marketers report campaigns deliver a 119% return on their investment. But despite the face that email is paying off, many brands continue to struggle with simple email campaign implementation.

“Publishers are well-known for having a deep understanding of their audiences. However, the survey findings reveal that they have yet to apply those experiences to email marketing,” said Alex Lustberg, CMO at Lyris. “This represents a significant opportunity for the industry to apply email marketing best practices to better engage their audiences to increase advertising and subscription revenue.”

According to the report list building is the top problem for many, with most saying list growth/maintenance would be a top priority through 2015. Mobile optimization is another point of pain.

“In spite of the fact that most email is viewed on mobile devices, only 34 percent of survey respondents said their emails are fully mobile-optimized. While many have plans to expand their mobile design efforts, 16 percent of respondents are not even sure where to start,” write Lyris experts.

Other interesting findings from the report include:

• 40% of email marketers don’t analyze audience behaviors for personalization
• 30% say they’ll focus on improving personalization over the next year
• 79% report they ‘have no strategy’ for engaging/re-engaging inactive list subscribers