Improving Email Marketing Campaigns

Bridging the gap Between Business and Consumers

Abstract

Email marketing campaigns are a system of advertising used widely by most business organizations today. Although not as flashy or captivating as contemporary forms of advertisements, email marketing remains one of the most useful regarding return on investment and consumer exposure. There are several issues surrounding creating effective email marketing campaigns, most prevalent is increasing customer open rates and converting consumer exposure. Most organizations find problems with email frequency and individuals believing messages received from businesses are nothing more than spam or advertisements. This research seeks to bridge the gaps between business to consumer communication strategies and explores the several potential underlying causes affecting customer beliefs about email marketing campaigns, specifically in the automobile industry. Facets of email marketing such as implementing segmentation strategy, preferences regarding content of emails (subject lines, body content, key words, images), and email frequency. Evidence is collected based on target market and demographic characteristics through secondary research of scholarly literature/academic journals and primary research with communication experts, industry executives, and general consumers. The current participant pool (n=4) of in-depth interviews provided insights into consumer behavior, strategies in increasing consumer involvement, and personal preferences regarding email content. A survey has also been administered current responses equaling n=144. Some major findings of the research performed include importance of segmentation strategies and increasing personal relevance of email content, improving subject lines through personalization and decreasing consumer spam beliefs, and creating marketing campaigns designed specifically for certain platforms/devices used most by recipients.

Faculty Mentor: Fernando Angulo-Ruiz

Department: Marketing