One-third of businesses find cultivating email mailing lists to be difficult

A recent survey conducted by ClickZ polled entrepreneurs on the most challenging aspects of running a successful emailmarketing campaign, among which were building lists of active subscribers and measuring returns on investments.

Cultivating active email lists was the lead obstacle for many business, with 36 percent of respondents saying it was their biggest struggle. Additionally, segmentation and measuring ROI were seen as challenges by 27 percent.

Issues in determining ROI may be a result of not having a clearly defined measurement system. According to the survey, 44 percent of respondents calculated success by measuring customer engagement. The remainder indicated they counted aspects such as revenue, customer churn and list size and growth to determine success.

When asked why most businesses used email as a marketing tool, the majority responded that they viewed the channel as a lead generation tool.

The survey also mentioned that many companies are anticipating the impact that mobile platforms could have on email. This is understandable, as a recent survey from Litmus showed that consumers are increasingly spending more time reading emails from their smartphones, relays MediaPost.