Businesses are still struggling to use digital marketing tools effectively

According to latest Hitting the Mark report

Businesses are still struggling to use digital marketing tools effectively and missing out on substantial returns on their investment, according to dotmailer’s 2018 Hitting the Mark report.

With email marketing able to return an average of £32 for every £1 spent when deployed effectively, brands can see an incredible return on their initial investment. However, the report found that despite putting significant resource into this area, most businesses aren’t utilising the tools to their full potential and are therefore missing out on potential revenue.

The study found that two-thirds of brands are still not using any form of audience segmentation, failing to take into consideration the individual preferences and needs of their customers.

Similarly, over half of brands (56 per cent) failed to send an abandoned cart email, missing out on a key opportunity to close a sale.

The report – which assessed thousands of marketing and transactional messages from brands of all sectors, sizes, and regions – scored organisations against a comprehensive list of criteria that looked at how tools such as automation, personalisation, and audience segmentation were used to build a satisfying and effective customer experience.

And while businesses had begun to invest in these areas, they still had a long way to go:

• Nine in ten brands scored just 13 per cent for personalisation
• Brands scored an average of 31 per cent in using customer-behaviour data to drive their strategy
• 53 per cent of brands failed to send an aftersales review email
• Similarly, the average post-purchase evaluation score was a paltry 39 per cent for all brands, highlighting an overall lacklustre experience

By not implementing simple steps and quick wins in the customer journey, brands are missing out on these potential returns on sales, not to mention the opportunity to build stronger, longer-lasting relationships with their customers.

Skip Fidura, Strategy & Insight Director at dotmailer comments: 

“Marketing has evolved; consumers expect marketers to be able to communicate relevant communications with them when they want over all of the channels that they use, and marketers now have the tools to not only deliver the right messages to the right people at the right time, but also to do all of this on the most appropriate channel. Consumers receive enormous quantities of messages every day and to stand out from the crowd you need to deliver relevant messages that consumers find useful, not irrelevant messages they consider to be ‘marketing’. In an era of high competition and even higher customer expectations, neglecting basic steps in the customer email journey is leaving companies at a costly disadvantage.”