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2019-04-02

Lithuanian e-commerce businesses do not take full advantage of email marketing



According to numerous esearch studies conducted in the US and EU, email marketing is one of the most efficient e-marketing tools. Based on the survey by Econsultancy, more than three-quarters marketing professionals distinguished email marketing as generating a higher return on investment to compare with other e-marketing tools. The research conducted by NFQ Technologies indicate the contrary trends: Lithuanian businesses are lagging behind. More than half of e-shops do not employ email marketing tools at all, while most of the remaining – do not prioritize them, thus losing a possibility to grow their businesses with additional sales opportunities.

“Our research conducted at the end of 2018 analyzed 223 major e-commerce platforms in Lithuania and the email marketing tools employed by them,”- said Matas Pocius, Head of Email Marketing Team at NFQ Technologies. According to him, the situation has slightly improved as compared to data collected back in 2017. However, Lithuanian businesses are lagging behind the ones in the US and EU.

The main advantage of using email marketing tools is the possibility to predict the expected outcome. For example – the Pop-up registration form in Lithuania and abroad generates up to 3 % new signups rate on average, but the research revealed it was the top choice for just under 11% of brands in Lithuania. More than 65% have opted for an inefficient and difficult to find traditional Static Opt-In form placed at the bottom of the web page, generating less than 0.1% signup rate.

On a positive note, the use of email automation grew. For example, one of the most popular - the Abandoned Cart Recovery Email was used by more than 20% of leading Lithuanian e-shops, though just over 9% chose a twice as efficient series of three automated emails instead. Similar trends have been observed in using Automated Welcome emails. Single Welcome email generates 1.5% higher sales rate, while a series of three emails result in double than that. Nonetheless, the former was used by nearly 25% of e-shops, while the latter - by less than 2%.

“The data indicates a rather controversial situation. Although email marketing is one of the most effective and one of the cheapest e-marketing tools, all three – automated Welcome and Cart Recovery emails together with regularly sent email Newsletters are used by just 10% of Lithuanian e-stores,”- summarized M. Pocius. 

According to him, nearly 60% of e-shops altogether skip emailing their registered users, while only 18% of them use one of the email marketing tools at least twice a week. 37% of them do not plan to integrate even a simple Opt-in form in the nearest future, while around 10% are cautious about doing so not to breach the GDPR rules.

“Research conducted in the EU and US reveals a majority of businesses planning to invest extensively into email marketing innovations. More than half of them plan for enabling more creative behavioural triggers and using automation to enable one to one communication. We hope the best international practices will not take long to transform toolboxes of Lithuanian e-marketing strategists,”- summarized Matas Pocius, Head of Email Marketing at NFQ Technologies.