For guaranteed ROI, there is no better digital communications channel than email finds The Adestra/Econsultancy Email Marketing Industry Census 2014. Furthermore, email is also the best channel in which to focus the budget as it’s proven to bring in the sales – one third of marketers now enjoy 20-50% of sales directly attributable to this channel. Yet most marketers rate their own campaigns results a lowly ‘poor’ or ‘average’.

Email marketing was ranked as the best channel in terms of return on investment, with 68% of companies rating the channel as “good“ or “excellent“. This marks a 3% increase since last year, while the previously highest ranked digital marketing channel, search engine optimisation, dropped 8%.

Marketers are also deriving more revenue from their email marketing efforts. On average, companies are attributing 23% of their total sales to the email marketing channel, compared to 18% in 2013 – equivalent to a proportionate rise of 28% in just one year. However, companies are spending just 16% of their marketing budget on email.

The report also finds that email send volumes have risen, despite previous census results that pointed towards a slowing of growth. The proportion of companies sending more than one million emails per month has doubled since 2007, while the proportion of companies sending more than 100,000 emails has risen from 32% in 2007 to 50% this year. This shows that as more emails are sent through targeted, personalized and automated programs, they become more relevant – and increased relevance equates to more revenue.

Steve Denner, director at Adestra, says: “Yet again we can see that email is an extraordinary channel for delivering ROI. The danger for buyers of marketing technology is that they increase spend on email assuming continued growth in return. The danger for vendors is that they attempt to capture a greater proportion of the budgets available without providing real return.“

Email clearly generates fantastic results for those who are making the time to adapt their marketing practice to the changing expectations of their customers. Marketers who are taking the time to plan and execute email campaigns with personalization in mind are seeing the highest returns on their programs. Among marketers who have built campaigns incorporating advanced segmentation, 33% of those would rate their email ROI as “excellent” as opposed to just 13% of those not doing it.

One proven way to boost ROI is to make use of functions such as personalization, automation, dynamic content and mobile optimization. The report shows that there is a trend where email ROI increases markedly with increased use of email platform functionality.

Yet the report does show things aren’t all rosy. Email marketers rate their own campaign performance poorly – 58% said their own campaign results were ‘average’ or ‘poor’. So there are still huge areas for improvement in this mature communications channel.

For a copy of the Adestra/Econsultancy Email Marketing Industry Census 2014 click here.

To get expert insight into the findings from the census organizers – register for the free webinar here.