• by March 21, 2001

The recent study by Opt-in News reveals some interesting facts about what's happening right now in the email marketing industry. Two questions are: 'what to buy?' - direct mail or e-zine ads; and 'how to buy it?' - CPM, CPA, CPC, or other.

Well, judging by that most controversial of metrics - the click-through rate - the majority of email marketing networks shared similar results for the year 2000. However, the range between direct email (where a single ad copy is broadcast to email recipients) and e-zine sponsorship (ad copy placed in the body of an email publication), was somewhat dramatic with the highest annual CTR average being 8.5% and the lowest - .9%.

The collective average CTR for direct email marketing networks in the year 2000 was 4.8%. The collective average CTR for e-zine/newsletter marketing networks in the year 2000 was 2.6%.

As far as pricing goes, for email networks, CPM pricing is the model of choice. With the current market climate there has been an overall decrease in direct email CPM rates with an average drop of 12% from the year 2000. The average CPM rate for a direct email campaign in 2000 was $240, while the current average CPM rate is $210.

As PennMedia's Jaffer Ali explained, "If the media is not effective enough to garner a CPM, we will simply stop selling it. Media does not suddenly become more response-worthy due to the way in which people pay for it. If a medium cannot sustain a CPM pricing model, it simply means it is not effective."