50% of consumers who want marketing comms prefer them via email
First, the bad news. Half of the 500 U.S. adults surveyed for Message Systems’ report said they do not want to receive marketing messages or notifications. But even this information is valuable to marketers.
Perhaps the biggest email lesson to be learned here is this: email marketers should embrace the unsubscribe button and celebrate every time someone clicks it,” says Barbara Burlington, VP of Corporate Communications at Message Systems. “If half of consumers don’t even want to see deals or offers come through, then marketers likewise should not want to see those names on their target lists.”
Now that’s out the way, the good news, for email marketers, is that 50% of those that do want to receive marketing messages, special offer/deal notifications and coupons want them via email. That’s significantly more than for any other channel. Barely 10% preferred text messages, 7.14% favored snail mail, social was not particularly popular with just 5.29% and push notifications were preferred by just 3.38%.
Email was also the channel of choice among consumers for initiating “non-emergency customer service issues” (31.79%). Again, way ahead of other channels such as telephone (29.43%), other (22.46%), online chat (9.41%) and social (6.92%).
“Consumers are nowhere near giving up on email for how they interact with brands – it’s what they want and what they expect the majority of time,” advises Burlington. “But today, they have higher expectations for personalized, relevant content and instant results. As companies evolve their customer-facing processes of marketing, customer service, sales and user engagement, it’s important for them to integrate email in a way that matches or exceeds those expectations, or they’ll risk falling behind.”
Earlier this week we reported on a survey by Give as you Live that found almost two-thirds of consumers were more likely to be distracted and engage with an email link from a retailer than they are social media posts or advertising on social media. While 64% of consumers said they were engaged by direct email marketing, just 10% said the same of social media posts, and 10% by social media advertising.
Furthermore, according to a recent study by Campaigner, marketers also favor email with six out of 10 ranking the channel as their leading producer of ROI.
