Commentary
More Emails Opened, Clicked Through
- by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, July 22, 2009
The global consumer email study revealed consumers are taking a variety of offline actions as a result of permission-based email communications. These trends are apparent around the globe with 59% of Asia Pacific consumers making an offline purchase as a result of email communications, followed by 53% in North America and 37% in Europe.
Based on this research and the latest quarterly Email Trends and Benchmarks, the report concludes that sophisticated marketers are incorporating triggers, transactions, preferences, segmentation and other advanced analytics to produce more successful campaigns.
According to Kevin Mabley, Senior Vice President of Strategic Services, Epsilon, concludes "... email marketing continues to perform well and provide stable results... clients who continue to see strong results... segment their subscriber base... deliver timely, relevant information... "
Report Highlights:
- Deliverability continues to remain stable at 94.1%, up from 93.4% in Q1 2008.
- Open rates increased to 22.1%, up 11.2% from the rate of 19.9% in Q1 2008.
- Click rates increased 4.0% overall from last quarter to 6.1%.
- Average volume per client is up 12% from this same
- time last year.
- None of the industries measured saw a decline across all three metrics.
Email Trends and Benchmarks study was compiled from 6 billion emails sent by Epsilon in January, February and March 2009 across multiple industries and more than 200 Epsilon clients. This benchmark data should be used only as a guideline, notes the report, as specifics for each company will drive results.
Overall Performance of Deliverability, Open and Click Rates | |||||||||
| Quarter | ||||||||
| 107 | 207 | 307 | 407 | 108 | 208 | 308 | 408 | 109 |
Click Through | 7.2% | 6.2% | 6.5% | 6.1% | 6.4% | 5.9% | 5.9% | 5.8% | 6.1% |
Open Rate | 22.1% | 20.7% | 20.7% | 19.8% | 19.9% | 18.8% | 19.8% | 20.9% | 22.1% |
Delivery | 93.7% | 95.1% | 94.3% | 93.1% | 93.4% | 93.2% | 93.6% | 94.4% | 94.1% |
Source: Epsilon, July 2009 | |||||||||
Business Products and Services, Consumer Packaged Goods, Pharmaceutical, Telecom and General Retail all saw an increase in all three major metrics - deliverability, opens and clicks - compared to last year.
Open Rate Comparison (Q1 09 vs. Q1 08) | ||
| Q1 2009 | Q1 2008 |
Business Products and Services General | 29.1% | 22.9% |
Business Publishing/Media General | 17.8% | 16.2% |
Consumer Products | ||
Packaged Goods | 17.1% | 16.4% |
General Products | 23.8% | 20.8% |
Pharmaceutical | 26.6% | 16.9% |
Publishing/Media General | 16.7% | 15.9% |
Services General | 20.0% | 24.7% |
Services Telecom | 22.9% | 22.5% |
Financial Services | ||
CC/Banks | 27.4% | 28.9% |
General Services | 31.4% | 25.6% |
Non-Profit/Education General | 24.3% | 23.1% |
Retail | ||
Apparel | 14.3% | 12.8% |
Electronics | 17.6% | 24.4% |
General | 22.9% | 16.3% |
Specialty | 19.1% | 17.3% |
Travel/Hospitality Travel Services | 23.3% | 24.2% |
Source: Epsilon, July 2009 | ||
For more information about the study, visit Epsilon here, or The Epsilon Email Trends and Benchmark report is available here..
Jack Loechner is the Editor of The Center for Media Research's daily Research Brief. You can reach him at jack@mediapost.com.
Good info Jack. While so many marketing tools focus on the acquisition of consumers, this study shows that permission based email campaigns continue to be a powerful way to convert and retain consumers.