by Hannah
23. November 2009 00:52
Almost 60% of South Africans prefer to connect with colleagues, friends and family via email instead of voice calls and text messages - as shown in a recent Nokia SA study. The "Email Responsiveness Research – Global Overview" study was conducted by ICM among 7,826 people in seven countries during July 2009. Countries where research was conducted: UK, Russia, Spain, South Africa, UAE, Singapore and Italy.
And would you believe it! South Africa is the quickest nation with 24% responding to most mails within five minutes, as opposed to Brits who are the slowest with 13% taking up to two hours and a further 11% admitting to taking over a day to respond. Interestingly, 60% of people from the United Arabian Emirates (UAE) believe it is best to reply to important emails quickly rather than spending time making sure it reads perfectly before hitting send.
Half of the South Africans polled said that they only read emails if they know the sender. So when you send your next newsletter with GraphicMail, remember to clearly state the From address and to consider including your company name in the subject line. Remember that most preview panes only show the first 40 characters of a subject line!
The Nokia SA study also found some interesting provincial differences, which however don't come as such a surprise. Gautengelers spend between one and two hours a day responding to emails, while people in the Eastern Cape take an average of 24 hours before they hit "reply"! The study doesn't reveal if the participants liked receiving newsletters and promotions via email, but we can make a safe assumption that they do, since it is their preferred mode of communication. The average open rate among our South African clients' newsletter sends remained at a steady figure of about 16% in 2009, with industry-specific newsletter open rates of 20 - 25%.
Some interesting provincial differences
The Nokia study has found some interesting differences between provinces. Consider some of these preferences when sending your next email campaign to your South African subscribers. Remember to spell-check, keep it short and only check your send reports 24 hours after a send for an accurate campaign success feedback.
In the Eastern Cape the onus is on flowing prose (52%) and perfect spelling (43%) - so if your target market is mainly in the Eastern Cape, make sure that you cross all your Ts and dot all your Is.
One in ten people in the Western Cape (11%) state that they make their emails short and succinct in order to prove how busy and efficient they are! (If you send to this segment, remember to keep your news short and to the point!)
One in ten people in Mpumalanga (11%) take a ‘more haste, less speed’ approach to email responsiveness by taking up to 24 hours to reply to emails. Best you only check your reports and stats at least 24 hours after a send.
Email marketing will still remain the reliable marketing workhorse. At its core, email marketing helps with customer relationship management: It builds relationships with existing and potential customers. Quirk states that although spam mail has done a great deal to discredit the email marketing industry, the benefits are still apparent and substantiated by the fact that in 2006, JupiterResearch predicted global spending on email marketing to rise from USD 885 to USD 1.1 billion in 2010. But hang on - we're only slowly recovering from an economical world crisis, so these predictions are probably out of line, we can hear you say. No matter what industry your organization is in, chances are your total marketing budget decreased substantially in 2009. MarketingSherpa however found that a much larger percentage of organizations increased their email marketing budgets than decreased them. Most marketers focus on two marketing tactics, email and social media.
And what does the future hold? Forrester Research Inc. predicts spending on email marketing in the US to balloon to USD 2 billion by 2014 - a nearly 11 % compound annual growth rate. Forrester also agrees that a high return on investment, high measurability and the growing use of social email accounts will fuel the use of email. Did you know that you can calculate your return on investment with our ROI calculator? Also, our drill-down stats that we offer in your GraphicMail reports offer you all the detailed information that you need to be able to measure your email campaigns accurately.