Email Marketing Increasingly Important In Reaching Consumers In Asia Pacific

New Survey Results Find Nearly One-Third of the Respondents would ‘Always’ Respond To Targeted Promotional E-Mail

HONG KONG – June 18, 2008 – A survey conducted by Epsilon International and Return Path has revealed that email-based marketing resonates strongly with consumers across the Asia Pacific region and, alongside traditional mediums, is fast becoming one of the key ways to reach consumers.

In one of the most significant findings, nearly one in three respondents (32%) said that they would “always” respond to targeted, promotional e-mails.

The survey, which was carried out in February 2008 throughout Asia-Pacific region, surveyed 1,169 participants and sought to discover consumer email habits and attitudes to permission email marketing and spam.

"Through client campaigns across Asia Pacific, we know that consumer interaction and responses to targeted permission based communications are high, and drive significant returns for our clients,” said Dominic Powers, senior vice president, Asia Pacific, Epsilon International. “This survey further supports the fact that consumers respond to email marketing if it is directed to the right person, at the right time, and with the right message."

Another survey finding pointed to the increasing acceptance of electronic marketing when used in a controlled and targeted manner, with 54% of the respondents saying that they would use e-mail coupons to buy products online or offline.

“E-mail marketing is rapidly becoming the preferred method for consumers to be reached by marketers,” Powers said. “Aside from the obvious environmental angles, consumers are now savvy enough to realise that targeted campaigns can offer them deals or savings above the typical promotional offers they find in their letterbox at home.”

In addition, the survey revealed the speeds at which average email users in APAC are accessing the Internet. In Australia about half (52% home and 49% work) said they accessed the Net at speeds of 1.5Mbps or less. In contrast, in Japan and Hong Kong over 70 percent and 63 percent of email users respectively are using high speed broadband of 10Mbps or more at home and at work.

Other key findings in the survey:

• Mainland Chinese respondents have the highest uptake (34%) of using mobile devices for email, followed by Hong Kong at 29% and Japan 27%. Australia reported the lowest at 6%, followed by Malaysia at 11%.
• Before 10am is the favourite time for checking personal emails, with 9am being the peak email-opening hour among respondents of all territories except in Japan. About half of the Japanese respondents (46%) reported to check their personal inbox at night at 9pm or later.
• Promotional emails increases brand loyalty, said 63% of the respondents in India and 70% in China; while every other Indian respondent (52%) and 63% Chinese respondents said they had made more purchases after receiving promotional emails.
• Customers interact on relevancy. Half or more respondents in all the surveyed territories said they are willing to share personal information if they believe it drives relevant and more targeted offers, except in Hong Kong where more respondents (63%) said they would not want to release additional personal details regardless of the offers.
• Irrelevancy is the new spam. In addition to unsolicited emails, many respondents consider that the definition of spam also includes promotional emails or e-newsletters which they subscribed to but which they find no longer engaging or that fail address to their needs. 34% of respondents in China concur with this view of spam while only 11% in Australia do. Yet users suffer similarly on the time used to clear spam. More than half of the respondents across the region (59%) having reported spam, 63% are doing so at least three times a week.
• A low usage rate of spam filtering software is seen across Asia, except for Australia where over half of their respondents (59%) are using some kind of spam filtering programme. The lowest usage was found among Hong Kong respondents with a usage rate of 21% only, followed by China of 32% and India 33%

To obtain a copy of this proprietary research report or to learn more about the other findings, send your request to apac-info@epsilon.com or call one of our offices.

Australia - Sydney: +61 (02) 9271 5400
Hong Kong: +852 3589 6300
Singapore: +65 6236 0535
China - Beijing: +86 (10) 5907 3001
China - Shanghai: +86 (21) 5529 8188
China - Guangzhou: +86 (20) 2885 8293


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Methodology
The 2008 Epsilon International & Return Path Asia Pacific Consumer Email Survey was conducted online during February 2008. Email users were polled on their email usage habits as well as their attitudes to promotional emails and SPAM, or unsolicited commercial messages.

The survey questions were provided in three languages: English, Simplified Chinese and Japanese. The survey sample set was composed of a mix of panellists from 7 territories covering Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore, provided by Authentic Response, a division of Return Path Inc. Members of the response panel were registered in a double opt-in process recruited over time through a wide range of websites and screened continuously to avoid skewing the research results. Survey responses were validated using Authentic Response’s proprietary technology. Questionable responses and potential professional survey takers were removed to ensure the integrity of the results.

There were 1,179 questionnaires collected. Ten duplicates were discarded. A total of 1,169 unique questionnaires were completed by respondents from Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan and Malaysia. All respondents have at least one active email account from home or at work. The composite regional findings are weighted accordingly to ensure reliable geographic representation of the internet user population* of the responding countries.

* Source: Statistics of the Internet user population were taken from the December 2007 figures of the Internet World Stats (www.internetworldstats.com).



About Epsilon
Epsilon is the industry’s leading marketing services firm. Ad Age ranks Epsilon #1 U.S. Marketing Services Firm and #1 U.S. Direct Marketing Agency. Services include strategic consulting, database and loyalty technology, proprietary data, predictive modelling and a full range of creative and interactive services including brand and promotional development, web design, email deployment, search engine optimization and direct mail production. In addition, Epsilon is the world's largest permission-based email marketer. Epsilon is an Alliance Data company. For more information, visit www.epsilon.com or call 1.800.309.0505.

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