Increased Email Volume Pushes Down Email Open Rates
MailerMailer’s latest “Email Marketing Metrics Report” analyzes the current email marketing trends and offers some suggestions for marketers to improve their email marketing campaigns. Among the findings in the report is that email open rates have declined partly due to the increasingly large volume of emails subscribers receive on a regular basis.
According to the report, the email open rate in the second half of 2010 was 11.4 percent, down from 11.6 percent in the first half of 2010, and down from 14 percent in the second half of 2007.
“In previous years, the reasons cited for the open rate decline were image blocking, increased use of smart phones and list fatigue,” the report notes. “Though these factors continue to adversely affect email open rates, another element influencing open rates is the increasingly large volume of emails that subscribers regularly receive.”
MailerMailer notes that as the volume of emails reaching inboxes increases, the likelihood that recipients will open and interact with emails decreases.
Transportation was the industry with the highest open rate in the second half of 2010 with 17.6 percent, followed by nonprofits with 15.2 percent and consulting with 14.9 percent.
Overall, smaller email lists performed better than larger lists, according to the report’s findings.
Email marketers should expect their open rates to peak within the first two hours after delivery, with 12.4 percent of opens occurring after one hour.
In the second half of 2010, the click rate was 2.9 percent, down slightly from 3.2 percent in the first half of 2010, but up significantly from 1.6 percent in the second half of 2009. Back in the second half of 2007, the click rate was 2.9 percent. This relative stability of click rates suggests that the decline in open rates, email recipients are still finding relevant information in the emails they receive.
According to MailerMailer, email messages that contained more than 20 links had a click rate of 5.4 percent, while emails with 11-20 links had a click rate of 3 percent. Emails with 5-10 links had a click rate of 1.6 percent, and emails with 1-5 links had a click rate of 1.4 percent.
Consumer was the industry that displayed the highest click rate with 4.9 percent, followed by transportation with 4.6 percent and consulting with 4.5 percent.
As with open rates, the report found that smaller lists tended to have better click rates than larger lists. “This difference could be attributed to the perception that larger lists are often not as targeted as smaller lists or they lack the personalization that normally encourages clicks from the readers.”
The report also found that March saw the most emails sent by month, followed by October.
According to the report, open rates were highest on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays in 2010, while click rates were strongest on Sundays.
“Our findings suggest that email marketers who schedule their email campaigns to be delivered between 1 am and 5 am can expect higher volumes of email opens and clicks,” according to MailerMailer. Emails scheduled to be delivered between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. also saw a noticeable jump in open and click rates.
Emails are usually opened in the morning hours between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m., according to the report.
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