A study by Forrester Research and covered by Ken Magill at DirectMag finds interesting stats on how email marketing has been effected by today’s economy. Forrester reported a slight increase in consumer e-mail purchases from November to April. The study polled 2,000 North Americans in November and again in April. In November, 42% of consumers said they had made at least one email inspired purchase. In April, 45% had made an email inspired purchase. An increase in purchases from email could be due to the fact that bargain shopping is at premium right now. 82% of consumers planned no changes in their email spending habits.
One area the poll touch on was text messaging. 24% of consumers who send text messages plan to cut back on the amount of text messages they send and are planning to use email more often as a line of communication. This will draw more eyes to the inbox and in turn, allow consumers to see e-mail ads more frequently.
The Forrester Group seemed to think that email users are less susceptible to an economic downturn because the users are generally older and have more disposable income. I think that if eyes are being turned away from basic text messages and email is once again a more viable form of communication, consumers will view what is coming in the inbox more frequently and checking their email more than in the past.
The study also found that 41% of consumers are more likely to click on coupon ads because of the economic downturn. Increased click rates produce a synergistic effect with more consumers turning to email for a viable line of communication. Succinctly put for marketers, the more eyes the better. email marketers have a great opportunity to use coupons and incentives in their advertising push and score big.
It is good to see that commercial email has not taken a great hit from consumers. 2,000 people is a pretty small sample size representing the entire North American population. But if the statistics hold true for the population as a whole, e-mail marketers could have a field day and flourish during the recession.
