Study: Email Volume Rose 18% in Q2 2013, Gmail’s New Inbox Didn’t Affect Open or Click Rates
According to a study from Experian Marketing Services, email volume rose by nearly 18 percent year-over-year across all industries in the second quarter of 2013, with catalogers, consumer products and services, and multichannel retailers leading the way. The study also notes that Gmail’s new tabbed inbox, which has caused some email marketers some wariness, hasn’t yet had a notable affect one way or another on open rates and click rates.
Email volume increased 17.9 percent in the second quarter. According to Experian’s “Q2 2013 Quarterly Email Benchmark Study,” catalogers led the upward charge with a 31.7 percent year-over-year rise in email volume. The study notes that 9 in 10 cataloger brands boosted their email volume in the second quarter. Meanwhile, two-thirds of consumer products and services brands, and three-quarters of multichannel retailers also boosted their email volume in the quarter.
The volume of email sent in the second quarter reflected a 7 percent increase from the volume observed in the first quarter, according to Experian. The quarter-over-quarter increase in email volume in the second quarter of 2012 was 2 percent.
According to Experian, the total open rate (counts all opens recorded for a mailing, including multiple opens by the same subscriber) across all industries in the second quarter was 22.8 percent, up from the total open rate in the same quarter last year.
The unique open rate (counts the number of unique subscribers
