Consumers Opening Fewer E-Mails

• Posted: Wednesday, November 19, 2008
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: Business Analysis

Opens and clicks have been falling, but marketers aren’t about to drop their favorite tactic.
Fewer consumers worldwide are opening marketing e-mails, according to a November 2008 study by MailerMailer.

The company found that the average marketing e-mail open rate fell to 13.20% in the first half of 2008, compared with 16.11% in the first half of 2007. Click rates also fell, from 3.18% in the first half of 2007 to 2.73% in the first half of this year.

MailerMailer said that some industries had higher open rates for their marketing e-mail, with banking/finance, religious/spiritual, government and telecommunications having more success than other verticals.

As revealed in previous studies, shorter subject lines performed better than longer ones. Subject lines of less than 35 characters yielded an average open rate of 19.6% and a 3.1% average click rate. E-mails with subject lines of 35 or more characters drew average open rates of 14.8% and average click rates of 1.9%.

As the most-established digital marketing tactic, e-mail may lack the glamour of other methods, but marketers continue to prize e-mail when it comes to producing results.

Online retailers worldwide surveyed in July and August 2008 by E-Consultancy and R.O.EYE said that e-mail was second only to paid search when it came to driving high volume. The sample size was relatively small, at 241 online retailers. However, the results are in line with similar surveys. Nearly four out of 10 search engine advertisers worldwide surveyed in January 2008 by Radar Research for the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) said e-mail marketing yielded the best ROI of any tactic. [eMarketer]

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