An email marketing study carried out by ‘Silverpop,’ an email marketing platform has found that local retailers are 25% more likely to offer email recipients the choice to opt-in over those in the United States, but Australian companies lag in offering customers sale or discount incentives.
The study found that 96% of US retailers use email marketing to communicate with their customers compared to 86% of Australians. However, Australian retailers do appear to be savvier when carrying out personalized email campaigns, with 35% of retailers offering registrants preference choices during the sign-up process. By comparison, only 28% of U.S. retailers tailored the opt-in data process.
However, 63% of local retailers that offered choices during registration didn’t connect their opt-out process to a preference centre. In doing this they broke ties with people who didn’t want to stop receiving communication altogether, but just wanted to reduce or refine it. By just adapting the opt-out process mass email marketers can save their lists from shrinking thus enabling them to obtain better results in the long term.
Jeff Clark said, "Australian retailers are outpacing those in the United States in asking their recipients what they want at the beginning of the relationship, but should be offering similar options to those unsubscribing. With irrelevancy being the number one reason people unsubscribe from email programs, listening to your customers and delivering the information they specifically ask for, can have a tremendous impact on your program's effectiveness."
Customer discounts are another area where Australian retailers differ from those in the U.S. Over half (56%) incorporate special incentives such as sales and discounts into their email campaigns. In comparison, 68% of U.S. retailers attract recipients with special offers.
