Email Marketing Benchmark Guide
Update: the 2012 edition of the Benchmark Guide just came out.
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The good / the less good
Who should buy it?
The sales page at Sherpa's online store
Last month, MarketingSherpa's Email Marketing Benchmark Guide hit the streets in its 2008 version. The annual guide has attracted a strong reputation among those serious about email marketing. But does the 2008 edition live up to that reputation?
The report weighs in at 328 pages, 260 charts, 12 images, nine heatmaps and two glossaries covering over 260 terms in email and mobile marketing. So, as with previous editions, this is no flimsy 17-page ebook. (Incidentally, you get both a .pdf version and a hardcopy for your money.)
The contents are drawn from a survey of over 1,200 (email) marketers, several private research studies and numerous other studies conducted by reputable third parties. So the information is more reliable than most.
Content overview
The initial chapter reviews the state of the industry, covering marketer attitudes and objectives, staffing numbers, challenges, budgeting, and the prevalence and effectiveness of different service and technology approaches.
The subsequent chapters then follow a more intuitive layout than the 2007 edition, mirroring the chronology of an email marketing campaign.
Chapter 2 covers list growth with, for example, data on different list building techniques and their usefulness, reviews of permission practices, list size distributions etc.
Chapter 3 deals with deliverability, with data on delivery rates, consumer habits and attitudes to email and spam, false positives, authentication uptake etc.
Chapter 4 tackles open rates, but also has some information on rendering issues (mainly preview panes and some image blocking information.)
Chapter 5 addresses responses and conversions, featuring, for example, heaps of statistics on clickthrough rates, conversion rates, and the impacts of segmentation.
Chapters 4 and 5 both have details on what you should be measuring and testing, and bonus sections on niche topics like merchant policies on affiliate email.
Chapter 6 reviews research into different approaches to marketing messages in transactional emails.
Chapter 7 has additional information on testing and analytics (including an eyetracking study with insights on ad positioning and design in email newsletters), while the final chapter briefly covers video and mobile email.
As ever, the guide stands out through two key characteristics:
1. The data is often diced and sliced to make it more relevant to your situation. So you'll commonly find B2B and B2C kept separately, sales promotions split off from informational newsletters etc.
2. Commentary, interpretation and actionable advice accompanies the raw numbers. This is more than just a book of statistics. (But it's not intended as a complete how-to, either.)
What I liked...
Like each edition before it, the Email Marketing Benchmark Guide has...
- Lots and lots of useful numbers you can use for budgeting, planning and reviewing your email marketing efforts.
- A large amount of additional commentary and insight with practical advice that can improve your email efforts immediately, some of which isn't available anywhere else.
And the 2008 edition has its own attractions...
- The transactional email study is fascinating and leads to some surprising conclusions. A must-read for those looking to expand their email marketing efforts to order confirmations, shipping notices, receipts etc.
- The special section on the impacts of segmentation really brings home the value of going beyond the "email blast" mentality. Ideal ammunition for persuading the boss or bank to part with more email marketing investment.
- The close look at consumer and corporate attitudes to spam has much excellent insight on the psychology of the email user. Particularly regarding the use (or not) of the dreaded "this is spam" button.
What I liked less...
Good as it is, the report could have perhaps done with one more editorial proofread. One or two charts are incorrectly labelled and I could get into an argument with the authors about some of the interpretations of the data. As with any statistical tome, it's important to read the numbers and comments with a critical eye.
On top of that:
- The glossary is probably the most comprehensive out there, but I think the same as last year. An update is due, with the removal of redundant terms (like Bonded Sender) plus the addition of some new terms from dynamic fields like email deliverability.
- It may just have been the print quality on my copy, but the shading sometimes makes it harder to distinguish between bars in charts.
- The contents don't always reflect practical priorities. There isn't too much on email design and rendering issues...some of the data on that topic is old (the image suppression features of different email clients, for example, is dated 2006 and makes no mention of Outlook 2007.) The relationship of email to social networks, RSS and other "competitors" also gets little coverage.
Who should buy it?
Beginners would be overwhelmed by the data and possibly confused by the nuances and detail. If you're just starting out with email, I'd recommend you first buy an introductory book like the Dummies Guide, or invest a little more and get Jeanne Jennings' Email Marketing Kit. Then consider the Benchmark Guide a year later.
Very experienced email marketing pros won't get too much new insight out of the guide, but might want a copy as a reference for when asked to produce numbers or stats by colleagues or clients. It is the definitive source.
The guide is best suited to those with some familiarity with email marketing and who want to move beyond the basics, ramp up their results, better understand the issues involved or gain awareness of the current position of the industry.
Link: The Benchmark Guide's sales page at SherpaStore.