Marketers used email communications more effectively during the year as open rates jumped to 22% in the third quarter of 2009 from 19.8% during the same period last year, or an increase of 11.1%, according to a study by Epsilon.
Click rates also edged up, to 6.2%, from 5.9 % in the third quarter of 2008—an increase of 5.1%.
Other third-quarter 2009 findings issued by Epsilon:
- Average volume per client increased 7.5% from the same period last year.
- The non-bounce rate dropped slightly, to 93.5%, from 94.1% reported in the second quarter 2009, but it was virtually unchanged from the previous year (93.6%).
-
Deliverability rates increased, with 91% of emails making it to the inbox (84% was reported for US and Canadian commercial email for the same period, according to Return Path data*).
Email Performance by Industry
Business Products and Services, Financial Services, Non-profit/Education, Retail, Retail Electronics and Retail Specialty all reported increases in three major metrics, including deliverability, opens, and clicks compared with third-quarter data from last year.
Retail's email performance improved significantly with increases in 11 of 12 metrics in the four Retail subcategories.
* Return Path tracks the delivery, blocking and filtering rates and reviews data from 45 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and more than 500,000 campaigns in the US and Canada.
About the data: Conducted by Epsilon, the "Q3 2009 North American Email Trends and Benchmarks Results" study was compiled from over 6 billion emails sent by Epsilon July-September 2009 across multiple industries and approximately 200 clients.
