CONSUMER EMAIL LIST MANAGEMENT - Email … EMAIL LIST MANAGEMENT 2 Consumer Email List Management Ascend2 Research Conducted in Partnership with BlueHornet. This work is licensed under

1CONSUMER EMAIL LIST MANAGEMENT

Overcoming Challenges To Growing & Maintaining Your List

CONSUMER EMAILLIST MANAGEMENT


Consumer Email List Management

Ascend2 Research Conducted in Partnership with BlueHornet.

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Unported License.

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Growing & Maintaining Consumer Email Lists 4

Most Important Email Marketing Objectives 5

How Successful is Your Email Marketing? 6

Most Challenging Obstacles to Success 7

The Importance of Consumer Email List Growth 8

How is Email List Size Changing? 9

Most Effective List Growth Tactics Used 10

Most Difficult List Growth Tactics to Execute 11

Resources Used to Execute Tactics 12

Tactical Effectiveness Versus Executional Difficulty 13

Form Fields Used for Email List Growth 14

Survey Methodology and Demographics 15

About the Research Partners 16

Table of Contents


Growing and maintaining consumer email lists is “very important” to the

overall success of marketing programs for 68% of business-to-consumer

companies surveyed.

But how will consumer marketers overcome new challenges to email list growth in the

year ahead?

To find out, Ascend2 and BlueHornet fielded the Email List Growth Survey and

completed interviews with 251 marketing, sales and business professionals from

around the world.

The data in this edition of the study titled Consumer Email List Management

represents the opinions of the 106 B2C companies participating in the survey. We

thank these busy professionals for sharing their insights with you.

This research has been produced for your use. Put it to work in your own marketing

strategy planning and presentation materials. Clip the charts and write about them in

your blog or post them on social media. Please share this research credited as

published.

Best regards,

Kim Tucker

Marketing Director

Growing & Maintaining Consumer Email Lists


The only thing B2C marketers want more than email list growth is to increase conversion

rates. Whether a conversion means capturing subscriber information or transacting an online

sale, it is the most important objective for email marketing in the year ahead.

Most Important Email Marketing Objectives


<<Suggest including the at

left graph on slide 7 as lead

in to challenges .

If the same question was

asked last year, comparing

results YOY would be

interesting>>

Seven out of ten B2C marketers rate their email marketing strategy successful to some

extent. However, only 17% consider it “very successful” and nearly as many (12%) consider

their email marketing “very unsuccessful”.

How Successful is Your Email Marketing?


Considerations:

Quality over quantity is hard to

accept when you’re trying to

grow your list, but remember,

invalid subscribers don’t

contribute to meaningful list

growth and high subscriber

lifetime value. Filter addresses

through a welcome program to

weed out invalids before

sending any offers. Even

better, scrub your data through

a validation service to ensure

clean lists.

Achieving email list growth success requires that B2C marketers overcome a number of

challenging and often overwhelming obstacles. These obstacles include a lack of list hygiene

practices, content relevancy, strategy effectiveness and in-house list growth expertise.

Most Challenging Obstacles to Success


Considerations:

According to industry

experts, your email list will

actually shrink 30% annually

due to subscribers changing

their email address alone.

Remember to factor in this

natural attrition when you set

your target list growth goals.

More than two-thirds (68%) of B2C companies consider email list growth “very important” to

the overall success of their marketing program. Email list growth is “not important” to only 5%

of consumer marketing programs.

The Importance of Consumer Email List Growth


Considerations:

If your email list is growing

slowly or shrinking – first

understand why:

1. What is the ratio of new

subscribers to opt outs

and hard bounces?

2. Which acquisition

source is most

effective? Least

effective?

3. Do you have a

preference center or

opt-down page to help

prevent opt-outs?

Once you understand the

above, you can begin to

identify opportunities for list

improvement and growth.

Despite the challenges, consumer email lists are growing rapidly for 20% of companies and

growing slowly for another 54%. Email list size is not changing or worse – shrinking – for the

remaining 26%.

How is Email List Size Changing?


Optimize your website for

subscriber acquisition:

1. Include homepage and

additional page opt-ins

in visible, easy to

access locations.

2. Test interstitial or

pop-up opt-ins. Your

consumers may

respond well -- or find

them intrusive.

3. Validate subscribers at

every point of

acquisition to ensure

quality of data

Providing access to private, value-added sections of a website barely tops social media

sharing as the most effective tactic used for growing consumer email lists. At the bottom of

the list are offline tactics such as capturing email information in-store or in call center

conversations.

Most Effective List Growth Tactics Used


Considerations:

Determining the degree of

difficulty to execute a tactic

often includes the time,

effort and expense required.

Social media sharing

requires significant time and

effort, but little direct

expense. However, it is still

ranked as the most difficult

tactic to execute for

consumer email list growth

purposes.

Most Difficult List Growth Tactics to Execute

Increase your social

acquisition by offering

incentives to subscribers for

sharing content.

Make it easy for subscribers

to share your content

socially by including share

links with pre-populated

content you provide.

Track social sharing data

and reward your brand

loyalists when they

encourage others to engage

with your brand.


While most (58%) of B2C companies use in-house resources exclusively to execute email list

growth tactics, 42% outsource all or part of these tactics to access the specialized skills and

expertise not available in-house, and to improve marketing program performance.

Resources Used to Execute Tactics


Providing access to private, added-value sections of a website is a far more effective email

list growth tactic to use than it is difficult to execute. As opposed to engaging consumers with

social media sharing which is almost equally effective and difficult for consumer marketers.

Tactical Effectiveness Versus Executional Difficulty


Considerations:

It’s important to only collect

mandatory fields. Tactics

such as a preference center

or progressive profiling can

be used to acquire more

data if you need it.

For website email opt-in,

blog or newsletter

subscription, it is optimal to

collect only email address.

For a ‘my account’ page,

more fields such as first and

last name are acceptable.

Most email list growth tactics require a form to capture subscriber information. The number of

fields in a form may vary, but the optimization principles remain the same: Fewer fields

generate more, less qualified subscribers. More fields generate fewer, more qualified

subscribers.

Form Fields Used for Email List Growth


Ascend2 benchmarks the performance of popular digital marketing strategies

and practices using a standardized questionnaire, research methodology and

proprietary 3-Minute Survey format. Findings are examined in a quantitative

context by experienced analysts and reported objectively.

This survey was conducted online from a panel of more than 50,000 US and

international marketing, sales and business professionals representing a

range of company sizes and roles. The segment of survey responses used for

this report is as follows:

Survey Methodology and Demographics

Number of Employees

More than 500 (Large) 16%

50 to 500 (Medium) 30%

Fewer than 50 (Small) 54%

Role in the Company

CEO / COO / CMO / CSO etc 27%

Marketing VP / Director / Manager 34%

Sales VP / Director / Manager

5%

Marketing or Sales Staff 25%

Other 9%


We Are Email Marketing.

As email channel experts, we deliver powerful technology and 360° Support to ensure your success. BlueHornet extends your

email marketing team’s expertise with our intuitive, all-inclusive email-marketing software platform and services. With BlueHornet,

you can quickly and efficiently implement sophisticated, data-driven lifecycle messaging programs for rapid return on investment.

Learn more at www.bluehornet.com

Research-Based Demand Generation for Marketing Solution Providers

If marketing professionals are your ideal prospects, we can help you find more of them. Marketing software, data and media

companies, and digital marketing agencies partner with Ascend2 to reliably generate demand and supplement marketing content

for their firms. Our Research Partner Programs are transparent – spotlighting your brand and the interests of your market.

Learn more at www.Ascend2.com

About the Research Partners


CONSUMER EMAIL LIST MANAGEMENT - Email … EMAIL LIST MANAGEMENT 2 Consumer Email List Management Ascend2 Research Conducted in Partnership with BlueHornet. This work is licensed under

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