British based global research firm TNS has revealed that email marketing campaigns that aren’t based on careful analysis from Business Intelligence (BI) technology are wasteful and potentially damaging to a companies reputation.
Half see marketing emails as spam
The survey showed that while British firms spend $7.6 billion a year on email marketing efforts, 52 percent of the 2,031 respondents said they see no difference between marketing emails and spam, and completely ignore them.
Worse, the study also found that 73 percent of participants believe email marketing is so poorly focused that organizations will send them anything, irrespective of its relevance.
As a result, 59 percent said they wanted tougher legislation on email marketing.
However, 64 percent of survey participants said they would engage with marketing emails if they felt they were relevant and properly targeted.
Use BI reporting and analytics to identify target audiences
These findings present an obvious opportunity for organizations to reduce costs, increase profits and prevent harmful damage to reputation by utilizing BI reporting and analytics to better identify their target audiences.
The cost of adopting BI technology to accurately analyze customer data and target emails effectively is negligible compared to the current wastage exposed by TNS.
The report suggests that IT departments are failing to use BI and analytics tools correctly, or not sharing them with marketing and other departments.
Pervasive BI reporting and analytics is the answer
However, often IT departments do not have the scope and time to assist other departments in using BI technology.
They key to solving this problem lies in developing easy-to-use BI solutions that allow business people of non-technical backgrounds to harness the power of business analytics without the need for IT support.