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#TECH: AI-powered e-mails will be key component for customer engagement

KUALA LUMPUR: Netcore Cloud, a customer communication, engagement, and retention, has released its Email Benchmark Report 2022.

The report analyses over 100 billion emails and showcases findings across 22 major industries, including BFSI, retail and e-commerce, beauty, food, entertainment, and media, covering the shifts in email marketing and benchmark metrics since the global pandemic and aims to help marketers strengthen their email strategy in 2022.

"E-mail marketing has prevailed to be one of the most trusted channels for marketing departments to connect and convert customers into loyalists. However, the pandemic and its subsequent challenges have ushered in a new era of email marketing with giant leaps into interactivity, privacy, and multimedia," the company said.

Commenting on the report, Netcore Cloud Group chief executive officer Kalpit Jain said in the last two years of the global pandemic, e-mail has become the prominent channel for personalised and conversational marketing.

"The coming years will see AI-powered tools and interactive e-mails emerge as the most effective components of customer engagement," he said.

The report analyses 100 billion emails sent by Netcore Cloud global customers from 20+ major industries.

Key insights

Key insights from the report include best and worst days to send emails, industries most guilty of sending consumers spam mails, the average email open rate across industries, and email deliverability rates among industries.

Though differing from industry to industry, the report found that Fridays seem to be the best day of the week for getting high engagement on campaigns, while the worst day of the week to send a campaign is Sunday. For instance, Sunday is the perfect day to send an email across for MedTech, while Monday works best for eCommerce (kickstarting the week with shopping aspirations) and Fridays for travel companies (deals for weekend getaway or short trips).

Highest spam complaints were attributed to online dating and the media over-the-top (OTT) industry, with almost 30 complaints for every 10,000 emails sent. Job portals and the travel industry are placed third, with an average 14 complaints on Gmail for every 10,000 emails sent.

The average open rate for e-mails across industries diminished to 8.7 per cent.

According to Netcore Cloud's 2020 Covid survey report, 40 per cent of users had stopped checking their emails during the first lockdown.

Some sectors like insurance (the highest open rate at 16.2 per cent) and online pharmacy (15.1 per cent) saw strong open rates during the pandemic.

E-commerce (11.5 per cent) too saw better open rates as volumes of online shopping surged.

Meanwhile, e-mail deliverability rate was the highest for the retail industry at 98.6 per cent followed by food tech/ food delivery industry at 98 per cent.

Foodtech grew positively during 2021 due to intermittent lockdowns and restrictions on social mobility. Entertainment/ media over-the-top (OTT) companies have the lowest deliverability with an average of 77 per cent.

Sharing his views on the study, Netcore Cloud founder and managing director, Rajesh Jain said today, e-mail has evolved from a personal tool to one that helps businesses connect more meaningfully with their customers.

As it offers immense value for solving the attention recession problem, eliminating data poverty, reducing Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), and providing a pathway to profitable growth, we believe marketers need to prioritise email in the days to come.

He further added, "Our focus at Netcore Cloud has been to build Email 2.0 and to 'make email cool again'. Towards this, we partner with our customers to build a strong email marketing strategy that can change customer mindsets from delete to delight, drive engagement and habit creation, and power exponential, forever profitable growth."

Meanwhile, Email Connect founder and president Christopher Mariott, said, "Netcore's Email Benchmark Report 2022 provides unique insights into how the critical email metrics have evolved within two years into the pandemic. It is a wealth of knowledge about advances in AI automation, impact of Apple Mail Privacy Protection, and several email innovations that happened in 2021. A must-read for email marketers of all geographies and industries."

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