Federal Can-Spam legislation has had little effect on delivery rates of email marketing messages, according to DoubleClick Inc.'s "Q1 Email Trend Report." Overall delivery rates of legitimate email
marketing messages sent by the marketing technology firm edged up a bit from 87.5 percent in Q1 2003 to 88.8 percent in Q1 of this year, the first full quarter since the Can-Spam Act went into effect
January 1.
Elaine O'Gorman, VP of Strategy at email marketing technology firm Silverpop, is not surprised that email delivery numbers have remained relatively steady since Can-Spam took effect.
"Despite its name, the Can-Spam Act was not really intended to stop spam, but to identify spammers," O'Gorman comments.
The report also shows that open rates were down from 39.2 percent in Q1
2003 to 38.2 percent during the first quarter of 2004, while click-through rates inched downward from 8.9 percent to 8.4 percent. DoubleClick sends roughly 2 billion email messages per quarter, and
would not disclose a specific volume number regarding total messages sent during Q1 2004.
Eric Kirby, VP General Manager of Strategic Services at DoubleClick, points to steady average email
click-through rates of between 8 and 9 percent over the past two years as a sign of stability in the email marketing industry. The firm determines overall click-through rates by aggregating
click-through rates of all links within all messages sent.
"Most of what we're sending here for clients are retention-based mailings," Kirby explains, noting that marketers are showing interest in
maintaining existing customer relationships through email. "If there was anything we saw a dip in during Q1, it was acquisition mailings."
DoubleClick's Email Trend Report contains aggregated data
based on permission-based emails sent through the company's DARTmail email delivery system. The firm subtracts the rate of hard and soft bounce-back messages from the total number of messages sent to
determine delivery rate. In order to gauge average company performance, DoubleClick used un-weighted averages across all companies for the report.
The highest increase in delivery rates was
achieved by the travel sector; those rates rose from 85.1 percent in Q1 2003 to 90.7 percent in Q1 2004. Travel open rates were down a few points, and click-through rates were on par with Q1 2003.
"Travel has picked up as a category out there," Kirby observes, suggesting that the boost in travel email delivery rates reflects increases in travel spending overall. According to the Travel
Industry Association of America, domestic air revenue passenger miles rose 8.6 percent in March 2004 over March 2003, and international air revenue passenger miles were up 16.7 percent during the same
period--the largest year-over-year increase since November 2002.
The DoubleClick report also broke out stats for financial services, publishing, and consumer products and services industry
segments. Among the more significant findings, financial services click-through rates were up from 7.8 percent in Q1 2003 to 11.8 percent in Q1 2004.
Financial services companies are "showing a
real trend towards sending more utility-type messages," explains Silverpop's O'Gorman, in regard to time-sensitive, automated email messages sent by banks or credit card companies based on customer
requests or actions. "Those types of campaigns traditionally have higher open- and click-through rates," she adds.
In addition, the retail/catalog and business publisher sectors each garnered a
91.6 percent delivery rate. Consumer publishers and consumer products and services marketers both had higher than average click-through rates of 9.6 percent and 9.5 percent respectively, compared to
the 8.4 percent average.
The average revenue derived per email delivered, as shown in the DoubleClick report, dwindled from $0.28 in Q1 2003 to $0.23 in Q1 2004. Average order size also declined
$13 from Q1 2003 to $92 in Q1 2004.