Alastair Tempest (FEDMA director general) reports on the findings of a unique email marketing study, covering 21 countries across Europe, plus the USA.

Many businesses have realised that launching new products during economic downtowns is a pretty smart move – and so trade associations, of course, can also only learn from good examples. For that reason, FEDMA has just launched its new benchmark survey on email marketing in Europe.

This study, which surveyed both clients and email service providers (ESPs), found clients sanguine about the use of email in 2010. More than 66 per cent believe they will invest more in email this year (30 per cent said they would invest the same as in 2009 and only three per cent predict a drop in spend). Fifty-six per cent also admitted that they prepared their email campaigns in-house.

We were interested to see that there was an almost equal number who used email for sales or for lead generation. Many also emphasised its use for driving web traffic. Marketing strategies are therefore looking at email as a broad medium which is good for a variety of tasks.

Lack of targeting: high opt-outs

Email remains an inexpensive medium and some companies still send very large emailings, which are not as targeted as they could be. This can lead to high opt-out rates. Well-known marketer Stan Rapp was reported recently as saying that the average opt-out costs the list owner at least $100. And, of course, it also means that the customer or potential customer will be lost to that email list probably forever . . . which brings us to the never-ending challenge of spam, about which I have already used this column a number of times!

In recent studies by three of the main global expert bodies, spam continues to increase every year. 

Microsoft, Symantec and the European Network and Information Security Agency (Enisa) all calculate that spam now has reached 95 per cent of all email traffic. In the view of Symantec, this is a 39 per cent increase over 2006. 

Apart from being horrific, there are certainly a few conclusions which can be drawn from these data.

First, despite the very high levels of spam, it is clear new technologies and software are doing a good job in preventing spam from ever reaching our in-boxes. Spam filters, firewalls and suchlike exist on the level of the ISPs, at the email provider (eg Gmail, Yahoo, etc) and also in-house (companies’ anti-spam systems, individual anti-spam software and so on).

In other words, a vast amount of spam is captured and the intended recipient never knows about it. However, with that goes, as we all know, the false positives – genuine emails that are netted by spam filters somewhere down the line.

While maybe some of these are the result of the incautious use of headings, or a mass mailing to all the sender’s thousand cousins and friends around the world, others are caught because the user’s email address has been used by spammers and the user’s address has therefore been put on a blacklist. Once on a blacklist it is often extremely difficult to get off the list – often the only solution is to change email address.

Secondly, it seems to me we still have the challenge of persuading opinion formers and  information technology experts that there is a vast difference between spam (which used to be defined as an ‘untargeted, mass mailing’) and bone fide email marketing using lists of customers/potential customers who have given their consent. 

Too many filters at ISP, email provider or recipient level still define spam as any mailing of over a certain number (often over 99, but even over 19). Thus not only does ‘genuine spam’ get caught, but also any mailing which has been sent out ‘in bulk’, including emailings about occasional college reunions; mailings by clubs and societies; family news (annual round-robin newsletters, births, deaths and suchlike) . . . and, of course, marketing emails.

Email marketers therefore have an increasingly difficult job to ensure they are not caught by ISP filters, by email provider filters (eg Yahoo, Gmail, etc), or by home or company filters and firewalls.

A consumer may have given his/her consent to receiving emails from a marketer, but if he/she forgets to adjust a powerful anti-spam system in the computer – or, in the case of a company to let the group spam filter know – then emails will get filtered out and never delivered. 

Increasingly advanced

Spammers are becoming increasingly sophisticated, using viruses, bots and other software to capture email addresses and delve into PCs. 

Recently, there have been reports of a major and apparently consistent attack on businesses and governments using extremely advanced spyware, which allegedly can be traced back to some military technical schools in China. 

The capture of individual email addresses (usually also with the person’s personal address list) also encourages many people to change their email address relatively frequently – often again without informing marketers to whom consent has been given for the previous address. Thus, bounce backs increase and the customer is lost.

In the FEDMA Benchmark Report, the ESPs provided us with bounce, opt-out, click through and acquired unique open rates. However, I will not spoil your enjoyment of reading the full report by giving more details in this article!

Legal issue is paramount

From our point of view, at FEDMA, one issue which is always paramount is the legal aspect. It was good, therefore, to see that 57 per cent of marketers were very confident that they were compliant and a further 35 per cent felt confident. With the help of Field Fisher Waterhouse we have added to the Benchmark Report a country-by-country survey of the relevant national laws on email marketing, covering 21 European countries, plus, for good measure, the USA.

The European Union has two specific laws on email marketing (one of which has just been revised and the other is due to be revised this year). Despite this solid structure, national laws are not consistent. In some cases they clearly do not follow the EU’s regulations. We notice a worrying trend in this: increasingly the national data protection authorities are gaining the right to levy fines  on transgressors. If the laws differ and the authorities gain more powers to fine, email marketers may find it increasingly difficult to claim they are very confident that they are in compliance.

While we were preparing the Benchmark Report (which was sponsored by Alterian), my eye fell on a survey by ‘Neverfail’ on the use today’s business person makes of mobile and email. It pointed out that 95 per cent of the business people surveyed checked their emails out of office hours and 33 per cent admitted to hiding from family and friends during their holidays to check their emails. 

With this dedication to email, we look forward to repeating our benchmark survey next year!

The email marketing survey is available for €1,200, or for €349 to members of FEDMA. Discounts are also available to DMA members. Contact Lena Jaggi at FEDMA for details: ljaggi@fedma.org  

Alastair Tempest is director general, FEDMA (Federation of European Direct and Interactive Marketing).