• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, April 3, 2020

You might think that email use by brands would grow during the pandemic, given the inability of consumers to shop in stores. But it is not, judging by an analysis from Yes Marketing, a division of InfoGroup.

Overall, there were 344,627 email campaigns during the period of March 1-March 26 this year, versus 620,310 for the same time in 2019 — a 56.56% decrease. 

“This is a starting point as to the impact that COVID-19/Coronavirus has had on the email industry,” writes Kris Sakaluk, senior analyst of intelligence products at Yes Marketing. And despite that lower volume, the average open rate has sunk from 26.23% in 2019 to 25.32% in 2020.

Yet COVID-related emails are drawing an 28.05% open rate. And emails that contain COVID/Coronavirus in the subject line or body copy now make up 8.8% of all emails sent 

Meanwhile, deliverability has improved--from 87.15% in 2019 to 87.92% in 2020. And 89.04% of COVID-19 emails are hitting the inbox. 

The high deliverability rate for COVID-19-themed emails shows that “when push comes to shove, if the email is containing important information, regardless of who you are mailing or age of activity, ISPs are doing the right thing and are lending a hand,” Sakaluk continues. 

Here’s another metric that should be of concern to brands sending any kind of emails at all. Delete rates jumped from 7.42% in 2019 to 11.31% this year — a “strong indication that subscribers feel the content is growing stale on a more frequent basis,” Sakaluk notes.

COVID-19-themed emails experienced an even higher delete rate — 12.18%.

Moreover, the delete-after-open rate has increased from 13.47% in 2019 to 15.48% in 2020. And the rate is 15.35% for COVID-19 emails.

This shows that “subscribers are more likely to move on from an email at a faster pace,” Sakaluk states. And it proves that while catchy subject lines may have driven opens, "retention has fallen farther behind."

Of course, all this varies by industry sector.

The results come from a large global pool of subscriber panelists that have allowed Yes Marketing to "track these metrics on the backend.” Most are not Yes Marketing clients, and the company has no input into who receives the emails.

Here are the industry metrics supplied in charts by Yes Marketing:

Retail

Computer & Software

Finance

Travel & Tourism

Government & Politics

Insurance

Food