Cookie Preference Centre

Your Privacy
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Performance Cookies
Functional Cookies
Targeting Cookies

Your Privacy

When you visit any web site, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. This information might be about you, your preferences, your device or used to make the site work as you expect it to. The information does not usually identify you directly, but it can give you a more personalized web experience. You can choose not to allow some types of cookies. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings. However, you should know that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on the site and the services we are able to offer.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site may not work then.

Cookies used

ContactCenterWorld.com

Performance Cookies

These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources, so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies, we will not know when you have visited our site.

Cookies used

Google Analytics

Functional Cookies

These cookies allow the provision of enhance functionality and personalization, such as videos and live chats. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies, then some or all of these functionalities may not function properly.

Cookies used

Twitter

Facebook

LinkedIn

Targeting Cookies

These cookies are set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant ads on other sites. They work by uniquely identifying your browser and device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will not experience our targeted advertising across different websites.

Cookies used

LinkedIn

This site uses cookies and other tracking technologies to assist with navigation and your ability to provide feedback, analyse your use of our products and services, assist with our promotional and marketing efforts, and provide content from third parties

OK
[HIDE]

Here are some suggested Connections for you! - Log in to start networking.

MEMBER
Chris Davidson
Sales Marketing Associate
141
MEMBER
Khaled Ramadan
Advisor to Director General
742
EXECUTIVE MEMBER
Felipe Correa
Executive Director of Business Development
69

Industry Research : Top UK Retailers Failing to Improve Email Marketing Efforts

HMV and Republic knock M&S off the top spot, while Harrods and Early Learning Centre scores plummet in annual benchmark study

- Average email effectiveness score slips to 60%
- 73% of retailers studied in 2009 achieve lower scores in 2010
- Only 17% of email campaigns studied include any ‘share on social network’ links

The dotMailer annual email marketing benchmark study, Hitting the Mark, released May, reveals that UK retailers are continuing to ignore key email marketing techniques that can increase online traffic and sales, and failing to use email to exploit the opportunities offered by the growing popularity of social media marketing.

The benchmark study, assessed emails sent from 36 UK retailers in April 2010. Each email was evaluated against 16 criteria based on dotMailer’s Hitting the Mark scoring matrix, with each retailer awarded a total score out of 100. Two new categories – social media and mobile – were added to the study in 2010, reflecting the changing nature of recipient behaviour.

This year’s study delivered some shakeups in the Hitting the Mark league table. After two years in top position, Marks & Spencer has been knocked off the top spot by HMV and Republic - an impressive jump of 14 places for Republic, with joint high scores of 72. New Look and Figleaves came in joint second – a top scoring new entry for New Look. At the other end of the score board, both the Early Learning Centre and Harrods experienced significant drops.

Disappointingly, 73% of the 30 retailers that featured in last year’s study achieved lower scores this time round; and only 33% of all retailers studied in 2010 scored 70 or above. The average score of 67 for 2010 was the same as 2009, and down four points on 2008’s average of 71.

Socially connected
This year’s report includes a brand new section on social media marketing. Scores here were low, with a dismal average of 5.7 out of 15. Just 17% of email campaigns studied included any ‘share on social network’ links and with only four of the retailers included a link to their blog in the email content, a further seven had blogs on their site but no reference to them in the email. Other opportunities to build mailing lists and help recipients spread their marketing messages virally were overlooked by the majority of the retailers surveyed, with 50% not even including a ‘forward to friend’ link in their email.

Getting personal
Last year’s report criticised retailers for failing to personalise their emails with the name of their recipients This year the scores have declined even further, with just three of the 36 campaigns we studied using any kind of personalisation at all in their salutation. What’s more, although 33% of the retailers collected extra data when we signed up to receive their emails (e.g. gender, interests) only four of them actually used this data to tailor the email content they sent.

Designing for email
Research findings have shown that 19% of recipients will not read an email that they think is spam, and a further 19% will perceive an email as spam if it’s blank when the images are turned off. Overall low average scores in the categories of Renderability and Coding in this report indicate that retailers are not taking the relatively simple and straightforward steps to overcome the risk of being mistaken for spam.

 

The Hitting the Mark league table

Top Five Performers Index
HMV 72
Republic 72
Figleaves 70
New Look 70
Hamleys 69 
The Entertainer 69


Worst Five Offenders Index
Harrods 50
ELC 49
H&M 49
Lidl 48
STA 48
Currys 46

"For two years in a row, there has been no obvious improvement made by the retailers we have assessed, which is disappointing given some of the simple steps that can be taken to boost the effectiveness of email marketing," said Tink Taylor, Managing Director at dotMailer and an elected member of the Direct Marketing Association’s Email Marketing Council. "Email offers a highly cost-effective, trackable and accountable way of communicating with prospects and customers, but this latest study shows that too many companies are still getting it wrong.

"The study clearly demonstrates a lack of integration between email and social media, despite the latter’s growing popularity and influence. The combination of these two marketing disciplines offers new ways for retailers to really engage with their stakeholders to deliver meaningful results such as interactions online, sales and loyalty, but too many are failing to integrate these channels."

Using the information contained within the report, dotMailer’s Tink Taylor has outlined five top email marketing tips for retailers striving to ride out the recession:

1. Include forward to a friend and ‘add to social networks’ links – only 17% of the retailers assessed included ‘add to social networks’ links in their email messages. Viral and word-of-mouth marketing can provide lucrative opportunities to spread marketing messages, drive traffic, collect contact data and increase revenue – at little or no cost to the marketer.

2. Add links from your email campaigns to your social media pages and blog – Email can be a powerful and highly effective tool for driving traffic and signups to your organisations social media sites, helping to build further engagement and sales opportunity

3. Personalise your greeting - Opening an email with a personalised greeting can significantly improve both open and click-through rates by engaging the recipient and helping to establish one-to-one communication. 92% of the emails we looked at failed to do this, a big increase on the 70% in 2009.

4. Check renderability before sending – 19% of recipients will delete an email unread if it fails to render (display) correctly. There is still more work to be done in this crucial area with only 8% of emails we studied rendering correctly in every type of email account.

5. Make sure your template has a good balance of text to images - as well as helping your campaign to pass spam filters, this ensures an email is readable when images are switched off by the email client – a simple step that can increase open rates by up to 40%!

6. Initiate some action – the key to the success of an email campaign is to help recipients answer these three questions: Who is it from? What’s in it for me? and What shall I do next? Make sure you provide clear guidance on what you expect a recipient to do once they have read your email, for example click through to a product page, forward it to a friend, or contact your team. A third of retailers failed to provide a clear call to action.

Today's Tip of the Day - Vendor Selection

Read today's tip or listen to it on podcast.

Published: Monday, May 17, 2010

Printer Friendly Version Printer friendly version

2024 Buyers Guide Telecoms

 
1.) 
Cloudonix

Cloudonix’s smart voice calls enable frictionless experiences that drive better customer care and faster sales by merging voice and data into a complete service context. Cloudonix add Cloud capabilities to your existing on premise Call Center enabling your agents to work from anywhere in the world. Security, Privacy and more – rapidly deployed and cost effective without replacing your existing systems or retraining your team.

2.) 
PRILINK

Demarc Network Traffic Monitor
A lightweight Network Traffic Monitor that privides real-time traffic alerts and tracks all IP and SIP endpoints at Demarc. It analyzes mirrored SIP Trunk and Internet traffic in real-time and compiles Network Traffic Analytics (NTA) for all endpoints giving daily network traffic telemetry, most active endpoint summary, endpoint search table and more.

3.) 
Scopserv Integrated Services

ScopTEL IP PBX
The ScopTel IP PBX solution is a distributed software application
that can be installed on both virtual and physical servers, thus
offering a multitude of architectural designs from premise-based
servers to a centralized data center (DC) hosted WAN
environment. The application is distributed as an ISO which
includes the customized Linux operating system

4.) 
Televergence

Long Distance and Toll Free Specialists for Contact Centers
Televergence is a facilities based US Nationwide High volume/High Capacity Inbound and Outbound VoIP Carrier for Contact Centers. We specialize in termination (outbound) and origination (toll free and local DID) for the contact center. We have a technical staff that is up to date on the majority of platforms in use today, including asterisk and Vicci dial, as well as many of the currently in use software platforms.
Contact Centers generally see cost reduction and containment when using Televergence as their contact center telecom carrier. Televergence is the only active US VoIP carrier certified by the Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), which enables our services to qualify for meeting corporations Supplier Diversity Needs.
 

About us - in 60 seconds!

Join Our Team

Industry Champion Award Leaderboard

Most active award (top 10) entrants in the past 48 hours! - Vote for Others / About Program
Submit Event

Upcoming Events

The 19th AMERICAS Annual Best Practices Conferences are here! Meeting Point for the World's Best Contact Center & CX Companies Read More...
 30357 
Showing 1 - 1 of 3 items

Newsletter Registration

Please check to agree to be placed on the eNewsletter mailing list.
both ids empty
session userid =
session UserTempID =
session adminlevel =
session blnTempHelpChatShow =
CMS =
session cookie set = True
session page-view-total = 1
session page-view-total = 1
applicaiton blnAwardsClosed = True
session blnCompletedAwardInterestPopup = False
session blnCheckNewsletterInterestPopup =
session blnCompletedNewsletterInterestPopup =