If only email marketers would better–or even at all–segment their emails, their performance would significantly increase. A number of studies recognize this, most recently a report by Emailvision, which found that almost all US and European online marketing professionals believe it is very important (68.4%) or important (28.1%) to send targeted and personalized email marketing campaigns. Yet for some reason, this does not happen. The Emailvision survey went on to note that only 1 in 5 actively personalize their email marketing content across all campaigns, and that the proportion personalizing content across all platforms is almost matched by the percentage not personalizing any of their email marketing (18.5%). Better Tools? Some in the industry believe that as better tools come to market this will begin to change. ExactTarget, for example, has introduced a new data segmentation application called Audience Builder. It has a drag-and-drop interface that consolidates and segments data to create targeted audiences for campaigns across email, mobile, social media and the web. The Cost However, lack of tools may be only a one part of the problem. Ken Magill at the Magill Report notes that experts who call for email marketers to segment their email files often have no idea what’s involved in producing and managing the creative alone. "Database marketing expert Arthur Hughes had several articles published in 2011 explaining that just 20 percent of marketers he had worked with segmented their email files. Why? Because creating and managing all the different pieces of collateral is too painful," he wrote. "Marketers are finding that if they increase the volume of email they make more money, and they do it without having to hire additional creative talent, Hughes wrote. So that’s what they do." Snail Mail Too Not all firms see segmentation through such a prism. Some, such as Shutterfly, are in fact applying the same segmentation technology to other forms of communication, including regular mail. That is what CEO Jeff Housenbold told an audience at a recent industry conference. "We are bringing the power and the segmentation and analytics of email marketing to snail-mail marketing so that companies like Dell and AT&T, Toyota, Lexus, CarMax, The Gap are all using us now to tailor their snail-mail direct mail. "So it's–hey, Jeff, we see you are an Internet AT&T customer, but you don't have voice and cell; here is a special offer for you. So that per-piece might be $0.25 versus a static offset that might be $0.12 to $0.14; but the ROI is higher because of the personalization." source: MarketingVox
