• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, September 21, 2005

E-mails sent by retailers achieved a delivery rate of 95.7 percent in the second quarter--up from 93.9 percent in the first three months of the year, according to new data released by e-mail marketing services company Bigfoot Interactive.

The report tracked deliverability rates for five categories of marketers: cars, financial services, media, retail, and travel.

Overall, retail scored highest at 95.7 percent, followed by media (95.2 percent), travel (93.1 percent), financial services (91.1 percent), and automotive (80.2 percent). Bigfoot Interactive--which has agreed to be acquired by Alliance Data Systems' Epsilon unit--also looked at opt-out rates, open rates, and click-through rates.

Overall, car-related e-mails had an opt-out rate of .2 percent, while e-mails in the retail, financial services, and travel categories had opt-out rates of .1 percent, and media e-mails had almost no opt-outs.

Financial services e-mails were opened most frequently, with a 26.6 percent open rate, followed by auto messages (26.4 percent), media e-mails (18.3 percent), travel-related communications (15.2 percent), and retail (11.9 percent).

Of the five categories studied, automotive e-mails achieved the highest click-through rate (12.5 percent), while retail came in at the bottom (4.1 percent). In between were e-mails in the media category (10.5 percent), financial services (8.6 percent), and travel (4.5 percent).