Quick, simple and cost-effective – this is how managers in industrial enterprises rate their experiences with email marketing. No wonder that almost three thirds of enterprises can see a significant increase in email-supported direct marketing.

This was the result of a study of 685 top companies from different industrial sectors, carried out by eCRM consulting and technology provider artegic. Accordingly, every second enterprise already employs email marketing, but a lot of potential is still wasted.

Here the take aways of the study:

46% of the interviewed industrial enterprises already use email marketing. 9% are planning its use. This means, in the medium term, half of all industrial enterprises will be using email-supported direct marketing.

Email is quick, simple and cost-effective. The questioned companies agree and rate simple handling and quick processing (33%), as well as cost- effectiveness in comparison to postal mailings (32%) as the biggest advantages of email marketing.

Customer loyalty is the most important target in email marketing for industrial enterprises. 43% of companies see this as its core use, not only due to its significance in the B2B context. 32% use email for specific sales promotions and 14% for the acquisition of new customers.

Marketing topics are the most important subject when it comes to communication. 29% use their newsletters for sales related topics, followed by events (19%), product information (18%), general marketing (17%) and PR (14%). Service elements are hardly ever integrated in newsletters.

More than half (54%) of the questioned companies send newsletters quarterly or less frequently. 32% send monthly newsletters at least.

Large mailing lists are rather untypical in B2B. Almost half (49%) of the companies count with only 1000 recipients or less for their email marketing. 7% have more than 10,000 recipients, 1% more than 100,000.

With sending formats, HTML emailing dominates. 78% send their newsletters in HTML or multipart. The multipart proportion however, is only 4%. 22% send their newsletters as plain text.

78% send newsletters to recipients outside Germany, 56% of those also to recipients outside Europe.

More than half (54%) of companies do not statistically analyse their email newsletters. 65% of companies deal with their email marketing internally. Important areas in outsourcing are the email dispatch process (14%), as well as the creation through an agency (13%).

Almost half (48%) of the companies do not correctly obtain permissions for the sending of emails or are not aware of the legal implications of emailing marketing at all. Fortunately, the same number of companies (48%) use clear and traceable opt-ins for their email marketing. 4% imagine they are safe in the context of existing customer communication.

Email marketing has become a leading topic in industrial enterprises. Almost three quarters (72%) of questioned companies see an increase or even rapid increase of the significance of email marketing for their sector. Only 5% do not regard this issue as important.