Quris Finds Gap Between What Consumers Want vs. What They re Sent Via E-Mail
Wednesday, 11 January 2006
According to the fifth annual study authored by Quris, a full-service e-mail marketing solutions provider to Fortune 1000 companies with complex e-mail needs, there is still a significant gap between what consumers want versus what companies are sending. To understand how to best utilize permission e-mail, it is important that marketers focus on what the customer wants rather than to push their goals onto the customer, Quris finds.
Although, the gap may be closing in three notable areas: transaction confirmations, account statements, and e-mail coupons. Not only are these three types of e-mail becoming more popular with consumers, companies are also sending them more often to meet increasing consumer demand.
These findings are the first part of a series of findings from “The View from the Inbox” study based upon survey responses from 2,528 e-mail users in the United States.
“This increase in the number of e-mails read by consumers could reflect several changes in the e-mail landscape,” states Katie Cole, Vice President of Analytics and Research, Quris. “More and more people are transitioning their service requirements to the e-mail channel.
In addition, an increasing flexibility in the locations for checking e-mail could translate into an increasing reliance on e-mail for a variety of purposes.” Cole adds, “The ‘Permission E-mail Marketing Stars’ (PEM Stars) segment rely on e-mail more heavily than the majority of respondents and regularly read an average of nearly 11 permission e-mails in 2005 compared to five or fewer in 2004.”
When respondents were asked to pick from a list Quris provided of their top three choices of which permission e-mail currently received that is most worth reading, those surveyed preferred information that directly related to their purchase behavior.
Purchase and shipping confirmation messages ranked highest with 56% of those surveyed placing them on the top of the list, while nearly 50% ranked electronic statements and other individual account information as among what permission e-mail does best.
These 2005 figures each were almost 10% higher than they were in 2004, suggesting the importance of such information for customers