Marketing Research Chart: A look into how CMOs rate email’s effectiveness at achieving their top five business objectives

by W. Jeffrey Rice, Senior Research Analyst

Chart: Email business objectives compared to CMO perceptions of email effectiveness

Click here to see a larger, printable version of this chart

Today, for many companies, email communications is the chief channel to engage with customers to pull them through the Marketing-Sales pipeline. This is reflected in CMOs’ top five business objectives for email.

These objectives raise some important questions. For instance, which business objective is email most effective at achieving? And is the organization using email for the right purpose? The chart above answers these questions by comparing CMOs’ top objectives with their perceptions of email’s effectiveness for achieving each objective.

The exercise reveals email is more effective at achieving several business objectives other than increasing revenue. Email is excellent at executing business objectives that lead up to the ring of a register, including increasing lead generation and nurturing prospects.

Email also meets the after-sale goals of improving customer retention, and completing post-sale transactions. Email is an exceptional communication vehicle for keeping in touch with consumers. The technology lends itself to passing on critical information, updating the consumer on industry news, or confirming an order.

Despite its benefits, in the eyes of CMOs, email has a way to go in helping to optimize the top and bottom of the Marketing-Sales pipeline. Although 69% of CMOs surveyed said email was at least somewhat effective at increasing lead generation (as seen in this chart), only 19% of CMOs said email was very effective at doing this.

Even fewer CMOs, namely 18%, said email was very successful at qualifying those leads. Increasing sales conversion did only slightly better, with 21% of CMOs believing email was very effective at generating revenue.

For additional research data and insights about email marketing, download and read the free Executive Summary from MarketingSherpa’s 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report – Research and Insights for Engaging Email Subscribers.

Also, consider joining us in Las Vegas on February 7-10, 2012 for the world’s largest research-based email marketing event. Email Summit 2012 is shaping up to be our best to date, as we have a full slate of sessions aimed at overcoming your top email challenges with actionable training, grounded in rigorous research and science.

Useful links related to this chart

2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report

Improve Your Email Effectiveness: 5 ways to maximize your email results -- Webinar Replay

Email Research: The 5 best email variables to test

Remarketing Emails: How JetBlue's automated triggers get 1,640% more revenue-per-email than promotional emails