Brands with a heavy-handed approach to email marketing, take note; nearly two thirds (65%) of UK consumers are “not content” with either the volume or relevance of marketing emails.
The survey on 1000 British consumers by Mailjet highlights a disconnect between brand messaging and how a younger generation of mobile natives are consuming content, but that’s not to say they’re shunning it entirely.
Crucially, says Mailjet, brands need to adjust their strategy when engaging with different generations. For the less mobile-savvy over 30s, mobile falls a length behind desktop and laptop as the first choice for opening emails, with just 11% checking their inbox via mobile.
In the same vein, 72% of over 45s claim to have never noticed a real-time notification on any device after coming “into contact” with a brand.
Timing’s everything
The findings represent a pressing need for brands to address their personalisation techniques and timeliness, with better use of data insights and automation of the tools available for achieving this.
For consumers in general, better personalisation was expressed as the biggest priority for branded email improvement (44%), while for the under 30s, timeliness and regularity were chief concerns among a respective 34% and 28% share.
With this in mind, real-time updates should play a core part of any considerations around strategy; over a third (37%) of Brits admit to checking personal email during the working day for product delivery updates and product offers.
“Bare minimum”
A “growing acclimatisation” by consumers to the technologies brands are using is making automation much more feasible for brands, comments Mailjet’s UK marketing manager, Josie Scotchmer, with audiences taking for granted updates as a result of brand interactions.
“It’s important to note we are now at the point at which consumers have stopped looking out for brand communications and instead have come to expect timely, personalised interactions as the bare minimum throughout the purchase journey.”
According to the research, email is still effective for brand awareness among 61% of consumers, ahead of the likes social media advertising, TV ads and even direct mail.
However it’s worth noting that this doesn’t acknowledge the influence of that initial engagement between a consumer and brand leading to the exchanging of an email address in the first instance.