Die Effektivität von manuellem und automatisiertem Newsletter-Marketing

: Eine Untersuchung über die Reaktion der Kund:innen auf Automatisierungsmaßnahmen

Abstract

Digitalization has permanently changed consumer behaviour and presents companies with new challenges in customer communication. Automated solutions are becoming increasingly important in email marketing in particular. Despite numerous theoretical findings on the potential of marketing automation, empirical studies are still lacking. These should examine the concrete influence of manually created compared to automatically sent newsletters on the interaction behavior of recipients. This paper closes this research gap and uses the example of XXXLutz KG, one of Austria's leading furniture retailers, to analyze the extent to which different mailing logics affect key performance indicators such as open rate, click rate and unsubscribe rate. In the theoretical part of the thesis, the basics of email marketing as well as central concepts of marketing automation, personalization and the customer journey are presented. This is followed by an analysis of success factors in newsletter marketing and relevant KPIs that are used in the empirical study. This is based on two methodological approaches: a controlled A/B test and the analysis of historical newsletter data from the period July to December 2024. A thematically uniform kitchen campaign was used for the A/B test. Its content was sent in two variants: manually to a general recipient segment and automatically to a target group with documented interest. In addition, A/B tests were carried out with different subject and preview texts in order to examine the effect of personalized language elements. In an indepth analysis, the performance was also differentiated according to mailing types (e.g. CRM, brochure, style themes) and mailing days (e.g. Tuesday, Friday). The test results clearly show that automated newsletters perform better than manually sent variants in all key figures analyzed. In the A/B test, for example, the automated version achieved an open rate of 57.10%, compared to just 23.06% for the manual campaign. The click rate (3.44 % and 0.36 % respectively) and the click-to-open rate (5.80 % and 1.55 % respectively) were also significantly higher. The analysis of the historical campaign data confirms this trend with consistently superior values for automated newsletters over the entire study period. The subject line tests also show that even simple personalization measures can have a positive effect on interaction rates. In addition, it was shown that manual CRM mailings achieved the highest interaction rates due to their targeted approach and that Friday proved to be a particularly high-performing mailing day. Overall, the study shows that automated email marketing in combination with targeted segmentation and personalized content is an effective means of increasing relevance and customer loyalty. Finally, practical recommendations for action are formulated. These include the use of trigger-based campaigns, the continuous measurement of success via KPIs and the targeted use of A/B tests and personalization elements as part of a data-based communication strategy.

Date of Award	2025
Original language	German (Austria)
Supervisor	René Riedl (Supervisor)