• by Ray Schultz , April 12, 2018

Educators are responsive to email marketing. And the higher the grade levels, the more likely they are to open the messages, judging by Digital Marketing Trends in the Education Market, a study from Market Data Retrieval (MDR).

Clickthrough rates averaged 3.38 for higher education compared with 2.54% last year. In contrast, campaigns to the K-12 level pulled 0.87%.

In 2017, the highest click rates were in campaigns to higher education faculty, at 3.58%. And open rates to this group hit 16.48%.

In contrast, emails to higher education leadership produced an average open rate of 21.80% and a click-through rate of 2.61%, largely because this sector is targeted less frequently, according to MDR.

On the K-12 level, emails to teachers generated an average open of 6.92% and click-through rate of 0.97%. Campaigns to K-12 leadership pulled less — a 6.46% open rate and 0.46% click-through rate.

Why is the higher education sector more responsive? 

Overall engagement rates rose among all groups, year-over-year. Delivery rates also skyrocketed to 97.14% for higher education —  up from 91.06 in 2016, and 94.60% for higher education, versus 91.91% the year before.

This is partly attributable to the smaller size of campaigns, with those that send 50,000 emails seeing the most dramatic improvements. 

Within the Higher Ed market, association/nonprofit mailers pulled the highest average rates—48.63% for opens, and 5.93% for click-throughs. 

Institutions and degree programs were next, with a 25.88% open and 2.61% click-through.

In contrast, consumer goods and services pulled a 16.88% open and 1.45% click-through. The technology segment was last, with a 10.99% open and 0.59 click-through. 

The most popular days for sending emails are Wednesday for higher education and Thursday for K-12.

The highest click rates take place around 10 a.m.

More opens occurred on mobile phones and tablets, and more clicks on laptops or desktops.

MDR concludes, “Unique open rates are a clear indicator that more emails arebeing placed in the recipient’s inbox because they show increased engagement with email. However, all metrics should be taken into consideration together to get the total picture of your campaign and help you identify different issues that need to be addressed.” 

The company studied 398,152,458 delivered prospecting emails from 19,906 campaigns deployed by 1,302 clients.

MDR, a division of Dun & Bradstreet, is a marketing engagement company that provides a variety of services to the education market.