• by December 20, 2000

Don't know how I missed it, but here's a piece of research you may be interested in.

Biased as it may or may not be, List-Universe.com conducted a study of email newsletter advertising back in November, and found that "Email newsletters are the most effective form of online advertising," as Micki Hein, VP of sales and marketing at List-Universe.com put it.

I would never unconditionally agree with such a blanket statement, but Hein is convinced that "Subscribers look forward to receiving these e-magazines in their inboxes, and this means advertisers are reaching an actively engaged audience."

True or not, amongst other findings, the study showed that while the CPM rate was less expensive for email newsletters in comparison to banners, the average Click Through Rate was considerably higher. Newsletters aimed at consumers had a median average of 21,350 subscribers, sold ads for a median of $4 CPM and pulled a median click through rate of 1%.

B2B newsletters had a median average of 5,670 subscribers, sold ads for a median of $45 CPM and pulled an average click through rate of 2%. For comparison, banner click through rates are generally averaging less than half of this amount.

"We've found that email newsletter return on investment is often more than 10 times that of website banners," said Todd Kellner, managing editor of List-Universe.com. "This figure is much higher than we expected."