When Email Marketing Campaigns Are Just Mailing It In

Despite the surge of business-to-consumer interactivity in social media, organizations still vastly depend on email to connect with customers. However, a large portion of customer-focused email databases are believed to be either invalid or inaccurate, according to a recent survey from Experian Data Quality. Findings reveal an abundance of "improvement areas" which require the attention of both CIOs and their company's digital marketing teams: There are too many "spam hits" and failed attempts to reach consumers' inboxes—common email deliverability issues that can result in poor customer service, unnecessary expenses and even regulatory fallout. Customer privacy control, of course, remains a key area of concern. Beyond the pain points, CIOs can also work closely with marketing to deliver new ways to improve the personalization of the email customer experience—which is now considered a must have to ensure the success of these efforts. "Companies continue to rely on email to communicate with customers in a meaningful way and drive business," said Thomas Schutz, senior vice president and general manager of Experian Data Quality. "However, the majority of businesses are not maximizing this channel … (Most) do not have a consistent way of maintaining their email database or incorporating personalization techniques into their emails. That means they are facing deliverability challenges and a smaller number of customers interacting with their messages. By making simple changes to data quality practices, email marketers can have not only a better email database to send messages to, but also better analytics for segmentation and personalization." More than 200 U.S. business professionals took part in research.