Harte-Hanks: E-Mail Response Rates Get Lift from Dynamic Personalization, Behavior-Driven Delivery
Wednesday, 16 August 2006
A summary of e-mail marketing metrics compiled and written by Harte-Hanks and its Postfuture e-mail business, reveals a current-day snapshot of delivery, open, click-through, and opt-out rates, as well as a closer look at these data in 13 vertical market categories, the company announced today.
The Harte-Hanks Postfuture Index for January-June 2006 provides comparative e-mail metrics in aggregate, including 4,300 business and consumer e-mail campaigns compiled by the Harte-Hanks Postfuture Enterprise Edition, an e-mail marketing platform. The analysis included both marketing and transaction e-mail.
Of the 13 industry categories, restaurants enjoyed the best open rates (167.7 percent, open rates exceeding 100 percent occur by way of pass-alongs, and reopened e-mail), as well as the best click-through rates (57.5 percent).
Retail had the lowest open rate (35.3 percent), while the automotive sector had the lowest click-through rate (5.7 percent). All reported averages are unweighted.
"These data help provide e-mail marketers with up-to-date benchmarking information," said Richard Merrick, managing director, Postfuture at Harte-Hanks. "Particularly as we look at individual industries, we see which vertical markets are doing the best to pique the interest of e-mail recipients – be they consumers or business persons."
Behavioral targeting of messaging can raise metrics significantly, Merrick also reported. "One large retailer achieved a 74.2 percent open rate, 24.1 percent click-through rate and 0.1 percent opt-out rate, just by synchronizing e-mail with in-store activity," he said. "Using transactional e-mail to make dynamic product recommendations produce, on average, a 148.8 percent open rate and a 20.4 percent click-through rate."
The 13 industries mentioned in the study (in order of descending click-through rates) are: restaurants (57.5 percent), publishing (55.6 percent), pharmaceutical (23.8 percent), travel and hospitality (23.4 percent), conference events (14.2 percent), financial services (11.0 percent), technology (10.9 percent), government (9.5 percent), insurance (9.5 percent), consumer packaged goods (8.6 percent), entertainment (8.1 percent), retail (6.0 percent) and automotive (5.7 percent).
Among all sectors for all purposes of e-mail combined, the average delivered rate stands at 91.2 percent – with an average open rate of 78.8 percent of those e-mail delivered, click-through rate of 18.4 percent of all e-mail delivered, and an opt-out rate of 0.4 percent of all e-mail delivered.
Looking at differences between business and consumer markets, e-mail sent to consumers received the higher click-through rates of 19.9 percent and open rates of 78.9 percent, while business-to-business e-mail had rates of 11.2 percent and 67.7 percent, respectively.
Results of the most recent Postfuture Index are available at www.postfuture.com. The next Harte-Hanks Postfuture Index report is slated for Winter 2007, following the holiday season.