Track 21

Unit 4

Business

The art of marketing in a global culture

Page 35

Try it out!

Now, it’s estimated that email marketing spending will reach $1.1 billion by 2010. In that time B2C spending, business to consumer spending will increase by 5% annually to $897 million. And B2B spending, that is business-to-business spending will increase by 2.4% annually to $206 million. So there’s a lot of money invested in email marketing. And that reflects the importance companies place on it. After all, it reaches international as well as national markets and is quite cost-effective.

In fact, it’s estimated that 80% of retailers use regular customer emails to build customer relationships. But how effective is email marketing? Well, it depends on who statistics you use. One organization claims that of 44.4 million messages sent 95.6% were delivered. However, only 28.9% were actually opened. Apparently, making simple changes can increase success rates by more than 50%. For example, increasing the number of images and making the layout style more attractive. Also, business-to-business emails are more effective if the company or brand name is in the subject line.