| Email Marketing & Publishing | February 2005 |
Research
DoubleClick Email Trend Report
Savvy marketers will continue to see strong results from their email efforts, as the email marketing industry matures, DoubleClick predicts. That’s the conclusion from a survey of more than 2 billion email messages sent by hundreds of DoubleClick clients in third-quarter 2004.
The data shows bounce rates declining from the previous year in almost every business category, especially travel, where bounces dropped to 6.5% from 14.3%. Average delivery rate (emails sent minus the bounce-back rate) grew to 89.3%, an increase of 1.2%. These results suggest improving list hygiene and address collection practices.
Flagging response rates in most categories, however, suggest subscriber files are beginning to mature. New customers, who tend to be more responsive, now represent smaller proportions of total subscribers. The average open rate of 34.3% was down 7.5% from 2003. Still, email productivity, as expressed in a click-to-purchase conversion rate, grew nearly 25% year-over-year, to 4.2% in 2004 from 3.4% 2003.
More year-over-year findings:
- The average number of orders per email delivered rose significantly to 0.28% from 0.24%.
- Revenue per email delivered declined to $0.19, a 26.9% drop. A component of that calculation, the median order size, declined 11.9% to $89.
- Average click-through rate decreased to 8.2% from 9.2%.
- Average click-to-purchase rate increased 25.5% to 4.2%.
- The business products and services category had the highest open rates at 41.5%, while retail and catalogue had the lowest open rates at 30.8%.