• by Shankar Gupta , September 14, 2005

Two key e-mail metrics--open rates and click-through rates--both declined in the second quarter, according to data DoubleClick released on Tuesday.

Open rates in the second three months of the year dropped to 27.5 percent from 36 percent a year ago, while click-through rates dropped to 7.2 percent from 7.7 percent in the second quarter of 2004, according to DoubleClick's numbers.

Kevin Mabley, DoubleClick's vice president of account management and strategic service, attributes the decreased open rates largely to new image-blocking measures put in place by e-mail clients and ISPs, which can both prevent e-mails from being read.

Moreover, he said, the "maturation," or the amount of time an e-mail list has been growing, also contributes to low open rates. "Regularly, when we analyze consumer data files, newer people are the most responsive early on, but as those people become a smaller percentage of your file, that has downward pressure on open rates as well," he said.

Despite the lower open and click-through rates, conversions and orders per e-mail are up--a fact that DoubleClick says mitigates and even overrides the drop in consumer attention. The study, which looked at purchasing and open-rate data obtained through DoubleClick's DARTmail product, found that conversion rates rose to 4.6 percent in the second quarter--a 27.8 percent increase from last year. Orders per e-mail delivered rose to 0.26 percent--an 18.2 percent uptick from the second quarter of 2004.

According to Mabley, these increases in conversions and order rates more than override the decreased open and click-through rates. "The fact that those rates are going up, even in spite of the fact that open rates have declined, sort of underscores the strength of e-mail marketing," he said.