Lionbridge Survey Reveals New Opportunities for Marketers to Increase the Effectiveness of Global Email Marketing

WALTHAM, Mass., Aug. 12, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Lionbridge Technologies (Nasdaq: LIOX), today released the findings of its 2014 Global Email Survey, which identifies the top email communication opportunities and challenges global marketers face today.  The survey also revealed that, despite the relative maturity of email marketing, marketers continue to struggle with localization and translation efforts, mobile design compatibility, adhering to customer preferences and privacy laws, ROI performance measurement and internal marketing operations.

Email marketing continues to expand

Lionbridge's survey revealed that email has grown beyond the realm of traditional marketing. While over 70 percent of respondents use this digital channel for customer engagement and to communicate product news, more than 45 percent of respondents reported using email to address customer service inquiries and 58 percent of respondents use email to share relevant industry research and thought leadership content.

Key Areas for Improvement

• Design for your global audience.  More than 40 percent of survey respondents acknowledged that they do not localize or translate email copy, brand messaging, images, calls to action or web links, despite ongoing efforts to increase revenue from outside their native country. Additionally, nearly 75 percent do not maintain a list of regional preferences, creating inefficiencies in localization process. 

• Optimize for mobile.  The study revealed that, while mobile devices are consumers' preferred medium to read emails, only 42 percent of organizations are using responsive design to ensure recipients can effectively read and engage with their email messages via mobile.

• Prepare for stricter privacy policies.  Increasingly strict email privacy laws, such as the new Canadian anti-spam laws that recently took effect, are challenging hurdles for marketers. Even though complying with privacy standards is a basic expectation for marketers 47 percent of survey respondents apply buyer profiles to databases during the segmentation process vs. specifically asking the customer for their communication preference. Furthermore, 45 percent of respondents to the survey said they place no restrictions on the frequency of global email campaigns, which violates many anti-spam regulations.   

"With the proliferation of mobile devices and increased global internet access, email has become the most common tool to directly communicate with customers and prospects," explained Marc Osofsky, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Lionbridge. "Email enables organizations to reach a global audience easier and faster than ever before. At the same time, corporations are still struggling to consider culture, context, channel and compatibility when engaging with recipients. These should be areas of focus, especially as the email marketing industry continues to boom."

Other Key Findings

• Email marketing owners. More than 60 percent of respondents report using centralized email strategies in their corporate headquarters. However, even with a centralized approach, companies sometimes find that several business functions are emailing to the same lists based on their own schedules and objectives.

• Measuring performance. Despite the sophisticated tracking capabilities of today's email marketing systems, 74 percent of marketers still strongly rely on open rates to measure success. Less than half of respondents can actually tie email campaigns to their impact on sales revenue.

About the Study
For this study, Lionbridge polled more than 570 marketers from 25 countries during a three week period. Lionbridge has identified key insights within the report, using our industry expertise, to help marketers address the challenges of their current global email campaigns and to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of future campaigns. The full Lionbridge 2014 Global Email Survey can be found here.

About Lionbridge
Lionbridge enables more than 800 world-leading brands to increase international market share, speed adoption of products and effectively engage their customers in local markets worldwide. Using our innovative cloud technology platforms and our global crowd of more than 100,000 professional cloud workers, we provide translation, online marketing, global content management and application testing solutions that ensure global brand consistency, local relevancy and technical usability across all touch points of the customer lifecycle. Based in Waltham, Mass., Lionbridge maintains solution centers in 26 countries. To learn more, visit www.Lionbridge.com.

Link to use for this release: http://info.lionbridge.com/2014-Global-Email-Marketing-Survey_Matter-Report-Registration-Page.html

SOURCE Lionbridge Technologies