Businesses saying it by email

By SIMON HENDERY

Email has become the business world's preferred means of communication, but it remains a marketing afterthought.

A survey has found that email accounted for 42 per cent of daily business communication, well ahead of face-to-face contact (25 per cent) and phone calls (18 per cent).

Despite these statistics, the popularity of email is not reflected in the amount that businesses are spending on email and website marketing.

Almost half the companies surveyed spend less than 10 per cent of their marketing budget on online marketing and 14 per cent spent less than 3 per cent.

The survey was commissioned by Auckland e-marketing software development company Calcium Software to promote its email marketing product, mailPrimer.

Calcium worked with the Direct Marketing Association and MessageMedia to poll 3000 business people and received 454 replies. More than two-thirds of the respondents were from organisations with more than 50 staff.

Of those surveyed, 64 per cent said they used email to develop business or generate sales on an individual-to-individual basis.

Calcium's mailPrimer aims to "help companies maximise the power of their daily email communication" by "priming" all emails through standard templates.

The templates can be customised to suit different departments within an organisation, and can include appropriate links to relevant parts of a company's website.

A high number of businesses still send unprofessional-looking emails, says Calcium chief executive Gael de Kerdanet.

While the survey found support for the type of product Calcium is developing, it also revealed a reluctance to pay for it.

Of those respondents who were able, or willing, to say how much their company spent on marketing, most indicated that as a percentage of turnover it was small.

The greatest number, 14 per cent, said marketing accounted for less than 3 per cent of their sales.

Asked how that marketing money was spent, respondents said email and web traffic generation received the lowest proportion of the budget, with almost half of the businesses saying it received less than 10 per cent of the total.

Brochures had the biggest marketing budget, with 27 per cent of respondents spending between 10 and 30 per cent of their total budget on them and 14 per cent spending more than half their budget on them.

By comparison, 21 per cent of companies said they spent between 10 and 30 per cent of their marketing budget on advertising. Twelve per cent spent more than half their budget on advertising.

Survey results

How businesses communicate:

Email 42%

Face-to-face 25%

Phone 18%

Fax 2%

Other/not stated 13%

Individual emails sent per day:

Less than 10 4%

10 to 30 62%

31 to 50 23%

51 to 100 8%

Unsure 3%

Source: Calcium Software