Email marketing has been a lucrative sales promotional tool for a long time and a lot of business houses accepted it in their marketing mix.

However, a new retail benchmark study ‘Hitting the Mark’, released by dotMailer, reveals that some of the UK’s largest online and offline retailers are neglecting key areas of the email marketing process and failing to comply with Best Practice Guidelines.

Incredibly, according to the study results, almost half of the retailers (46%) surveyed, failed to comply with the basic legal requirements. The study evaluated 46 retailers’ email campaigns against 20 criteria, awarding each email campaign an Email Effectiveness rating out of 100.

The 20 criteria in the report were used to evaluate the key factors that need to be addressed by any email marketing campaign to be effective across the four key areas that determine success: deliverability, renderability, open rates and response rates. A range of aspects were considered, including sign-up, unsubscribing, the HTML code used, effectiveness of the design, targeting and time of sending.

The Alarming Result:

Topshop heads the index of UK retailers with a score of     but is one of only eight to score over 80%. STA Travel, ASDA and M&S were close behind with    ,     and     respectively. At the other end, shoe retailer Office came in last place (54) just behind Lidl and H&M (both 57). Overall an alarming 35% failed to score more than 70.

Key failings identified by the study included minimal or ineffective design, inappropriate landing pages and non-existent targeting. Alarmingly the average score for effective targeting was a lowly 16%, with only five brands in the study using information about customer preferences to tailor email content and just 15% asked for any information about customer preferences during the sign-up process.

The study also revealed that retailers are not investing in email specific design skills. By failing to understand the unique technical requirements of email design, communications are failing to render correctly across inboxes, leading to a less than satisfactory customer experience. Only 30% of retailers invested in campaign specific designs and 40% of retailers failed to design relevant landing pages with consistent branding and a clearly visible offer or call to action.

Tink Taylor, dotMailer’s Business Development Director and a member of the Direct Marketing Association’s Email Marketing Council said “Our study was eye-opening in demonstrating that many retailers are failing to realise the full potential of email as a sophisticated direct marketing channel, offering vast scope for targeted and measurable communications,�. “There is a long way to go in understanding that email requires specific skills and expertise that offline designers and website developers do not always possess or are not actually aware of. These key elements are essential to ensuring that email marketing activity engages customers, encourages them to interact with brands, and ultimately, impact sales.�, he concluded.

According to the survey, the top five performers in    .