Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Guess I'm going to learn something new here.

What's "CPG?"

Are these rented lists or your house list?

You may find what you need here:

https://www.doubleclick.com/us/knowledge_central/documents/trend_reports/dc...

However, I always suggest to clients that they focus more on the trends of their own numbers than the "industry" or "general" numbers that are available.

Every list is assembled differently, and every company has a different relationship with its customers. A 20% open rate might be wholly acceptable for some companies, but a disaster for others.

The thing to look at is your own trend. Is your list growing? How quickly are email addresses churning? Is your open rate the same? Increasing? How about click-throughs? Is your unsubscribe rate less than 1%? Half a percent? Is your mail even getting through?

I know this is not the answer you were looking for (maybe the link will help there), but I would not use any freely available data as a proxy by which you could or should estimate your own results.

Your mileage will vary!

Paul

I understand.

Without sounding like I'm trying to start an argument here, I still think it's less than desirable to put too much stock in what's happening industry-wide.

It sounds like you're experiencing a fall-off in email campaign performance, otherwise it's less likely that you'd be researching this or considering what measures to take.

However, even if you found out that the industry as a whole is experiencing problems, that wouldn't mean that there's nothing to be done. I have to assume that you're not content to simply mirror the performance of an industry, but rather that you seek to exceed it.

For what it's worth, everyone is experiencing issues with deliverability, and mail that is being reported as "delivered" is actually being trashed, even before the recipient has a chance to see it. If I knew more about your particular situation, I might be of more help here, but there are too many variables in email marketing to say with conviction what's causing the drop-off in your client's campaign performance.

At the very least, you might try deploying your next campaign with a third-party mailer (or a different one, if you already go that route), just to see if you get new opens that you otherwise weren't getting.

Hopefully someone else will come along with the specific information that you're seeking.

Good luck!

Paul