Denmark's largest survey of email marketing

… is run by Mette Will.

We did have a hand in it, though, because we were allowed to discuss the results with her, and gave her some insight into the data we hold about email marketing in the Danish market.

The survey is hugely interesting for anyone working with online communication, newsletters and marketing by email – even if you have never sent a single newsletter.

It gives you a really good insight into what you should focus on if you want to get your email marketing strategy moving.

I have picked out a few of what are, in my opinion, the most important points.

The most successful email marketers first and foremost have their internal backing in order!

You will not get far with your newsletters if management does not support the initiative. It quickly becomes difficult to come up with new, good stories to tell if your colleagues cannot deliver, and a newsletter works best if it is not always sales, sales, sales.

Among the companies that are least successful with email marketing, 42% believe they have too few newsletter readers

We have many customers with fewer than 500 recipients who get a great deal out of their newsletters, both in terms of branding and in kroner in the bank. It all depends on how you sell, and how you otherwise communicate, in your newsletter. In my opinion it is a misconception that large lists are necessary to get value out of a newsletter, and in reality the problem is more likely that people tend not to invest time in the newsletter as long as the list is small.

If you are in the situation yourself where you do not feel you can justify the time you spend on your newsletter because you are writing to too few recipients, then put your focus on getting more recipients.

Cross-tabulating incentives against success shows that the most successful use webinars and e-books almost three times as often as the least successful

Using incentives when collecting email addresses is a very good idea, but there is a difference between incentives. A competition can bring in many recipients, but it does not create much loyalty in the recipient. An e-book brings in fewer recipients, but those who sign up are more interested in your message, and therefore stick around longer.

And an e-book really does not have to be 100 pages covering everything you have ever learned about your particular field. Five tips, two A4 pages – that is closer to a whitepaper, but it creates value for the recipient all the same.

31% send fewer than 10 times a year

We can see in our statistics that there is a close relationship between how often a newsletter is sent and engagement among the recipients. If a company sends once every other month, the recipients will often forget the sender, and what they stand for, between each newsletter. That means there is a high probability that the recipient simply files the newsletter away without reading it.

Many senders worry that they are sending too often, but if there is content for a newsletter, the recipient will very rarely be annoyed at receiving it. And the few who might be annoyed will unsubscribe – meanwhile, you get to contact those who are not annoyed, and do not unsubscribe, far more often.

You should not shape your marketing around accommodating the people who are most easily annoyed by you, and for whom your brand and message mean the least.

There are many more interesting points in the survey, so I can only recommend reading it.