Email Marketing Metrics Report - Vision6 · PDF file Email Marketing Metrics Report AUSTRALIA...

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Email Marketing Metrics ReportAUSTRALIA

January - June 2010

Email Marketing Metrics Report Australia | Jan - June 20101 Copyright 2010 Vision 6®

What is included in this report?To make this data as useful as possible to professionals implementing email marketing, we have focused on a number of key metrics that are both informative and useful, including:

Open Rate General; Industry; Send Volume Categories Click Through Rate (CTR) General; Industry; Send Volume Categories; Relative to Open Industry Open; CTRs; Send Volume CategoriesDomain Open; CTRs; IndustryBy Day Open; CTRsBy Hour OpenBounce & Deliverability General; Industry

GeneralThis report is the eighth in a series of reports produced by Vision 6 every six months on the Australian email marketing landscape.

The report aims to:

Help marketers gauge and improve on their own email marketing results by 1. providing comparative benchmarks.Uncover trends, provide observations and identify factors that could have the 2. biggest impact on the success of your email campaigns.

Data Source This report includes data from over 232 million messages from 121,000 sends sent by predominantly Australian based companies during the fi rst six months of 2010.

We have excluded campaigns with less than fi ve email addresses to minimise data distortion. We also excluded all emails sent by our stand alone resellers and corporate networks.

Overview

What would you like to see in future reports?The Australian Email Marketing Report is in the process of being renovated. For this report we have introduced a new micro site. If you have any new ideas for this report please do share them.

We encourage you to send your feedback to [email protected]. Although we cannot promise to include everything, we will do our best to include your suggestions where possible.


Measurement 2007 H2 2008 H1 2008 H2 2009 H1 2009 H2 2010 H1

Overall Open Rate 20.24% 20.99% 22.52% 23.73% 25.16% 23.48%

Open Rate By Send Volume

5-499: 35.41%500-999: 31.65%1,000+: 19.64%

5-499: 34.66%500-999: 31.38%1,000+: 20.16%

5-499: 34.36%500-999: 31.04%1,000+: 21.95%

5-499: 34.62%500-999: 31.68%1,000+: 23.22%

5-499: 34.96%500-999: 31.49%1,000+: 24.74%

5-499: 34.24%500-999: 30.30%1,000+: 22.98%

Top 3 Industries with Highest Open Rates

Insurance/SuperReal Estate & PropertyManufacturing Ops.

Govt./DefenceAccountingManufacturing Ops.

Govt./DefenceAccountingCall Centre/Cust Serv

Govt./DefencePrimary IndustryAccounting

Govt./DefenceMining/Oil/GasPrimary Industry

Mining/Oil/GasLegal Govt./Defence

Overall Click Through Rate

4.16% 4.45% 4.81% 4.59% 5.46% 4.77%

Click Through Rate By Send Volume

5-499: 8.11%500-999: 6.67%1,000+: 3.95%

5-499: 8.8%500-999: 7.4%1,000+: 4.2%

5-499: 8.82%500-999: 7.34%1,000+: 4.63%

5-499: 8.87%500-999: 7.86%1,000+: 4.39%

5-499: 8.86%500-999: 7.74%1,000+: 5.32%

5-499: 8.54%500-999: 7.70%1,000+: 4.59%

Top 3 Industries with Highest Click Through Rates

Primary IndustryManufacturing Ops.Govt./Defence

Govt./DefenceManufacturing Ops.Engineering

Call Centre/Cust ServGovt./DefencePrimary Industry

Call Centre/Cust ServMining/Oil/GasPrimary Industry

Mining/Oil/Gas Call Centre/Cust ServAccounting

Call Centre/Cust ServMining/Oil/GasGovt./Defence

Click Through Rate Relative to Open Rates

20.31% 21.22% 21.37% 19.34% 21.72% 20.34%

Overall Bounce Rates 10.23% 10.34% 8.90% 7.22% 6.29% 5.75%

Bounce Rates by Send Volume

5-499: 7.07%500-999: 8.03%1,000+: 10.41%

5-499: 7.29%500-999: 8.09%1,000+: 10.52%

5-499: 7.25%500-999: 7.68%1,000+: 8.98%

5-499: 6.82%500-999: 6.94%1,000+: 7.24%

5-499: 6.52%500-999: 6.77%1,000+: 6.27%

5-499: 6.10%500-999: 6.19%1,000+: 5.73%

Top 3 Industries with Lowest Bounce Rates

Community & SportLegalScience & Technology

Community & SportLegalScience & Technology

LegalCall Centre/Cust ServMining/Oil/Gas

LegalCall Centre/Cust ServMining/Oil/Gas

LegalAccountingCall Centre/Cust Serv

AccountingCall Centre/Cust ServLegal

Most Popular Day for Email Sends

Friday Friday Friday Wednesday Wednesday Thursday

Key Findings Summary


For the fi rst time since compiling the Email Metrics Report, unique open rates have declined. Overall open rates have typically followed a consistent upwards trend, but after peaking in H2 2009, H1 2010 has seen this metric return to its reported fi gure from H1 2009.

This is a timely reminder for email marketers to remain focused on their subscribers and sending relevant, valuable and interesting email content.

H1 2010 has also recorded a decline in overall click through rates. This is the second time since this report began that a decline in overall click through rates has been recorded. This can be attributed to a range of factors including the type and layout of call-to-actions, the nature of the email content, and the perceived value to subscribers in clicking a link.

The key point is that email marketers need to test and measure the performance of their email campaigns and continually seek to improve. Tactics that used to command inbox attention in H2 2009 may no longer be relevant in today’s email environment. It is therefore important that email marketers examine their own campaign metrics to identify what has worked for them in the past, what they can learn from and what can be improved in the future.

Open Rates, Click Through Rates and RelevancyWhilst overall open and click through rates have declined, campaigns sent to small databases have continued to outperform campaigns sent to larger databases.

Campaigns sent to less than 500 recipients have continued their consistent trend of recording open rates in the vicinity of 34% and still achieve the highest click through rates by send volume. This is testament to the connection between small databases and email relevancy.

It is common belief that focusing on the needs of the few is easier than it is the needs of the many. Therefore, when building email campaigns, email marketers focus on smaller groups of subscribers are able to deliver more relevant content to meet subscriber’s needs, and therefore generate better responses.

Observations and Our Interpretations

Email marketers with large groups of subscribers can also benefi t from this logic. By following simple segmentation practices such as grouping subscribers into smaller categories of similar interests, email marketers are in a better position to deliver email content that is more relevant to individual subscriber preferences.

Quicker Response Times to OpenAnother noticeable trend is the decreasing amount of time it is taking people to open emails. For H1 2010, 25.2% of recipients who opened an email did so in the fi rst hour from which it was sent. This is up from 21.6% in H2 2009 (a change of 16.67%).

This shift in behaviour is most likely attributed to the increasing use of mobile devices to read emails. More than ever before, email users have constant and immediate access to their emails no matter where they are.

For email marketers, this change in behaviour can impact various aspects of their email strategy. Most notably, it is important to be testing email designs for rendering on mobile devices. It is also worth reconsidering any call-to-actions that involve the downloading of fi les or the viewing of web pages that may not be mobile friendly.


Contents

Unique Open Rates 05

Unique Open Rates by Send Volumes 06

Unique Open Rates by Industry 07

Unique Click Through Rates 08

Unique Click Through Rates by Send Volumes 09

Unique Click Through Rates by Industry 10

Click Through Rate Relative to Open Rate 11

Bounce Rates 12

Bounce Rates by Send Volumes 13

Bounces Rates by Industry 14

Send Volumes, Open & CTR for the Top 15 Domains 15

Open, CTR & Emails Sent by Day 16

Time Taken to Open Emails 17

Glossary & Acronyms 18


Unique Open Rates

WhatThis chart displays the total number of emails opened for the fi rst time (as opposed to being opened multiple times by the same recipient) as a percentage of the total number of emails sent.

FindingsUnique Open Rates for H1 2010 across all industries and domains were lower (1.68%) than the second half of 2009.

InterpretationsH2 2010 represents a decrease in open rates when compared to H2 2009.

In every report over the last four years open rates have increased. This is the fi rst report to show a drop in open rates.

These results are infl uenced by the decrease in open rate results for sends to both small (5-499 contacts) and large (1,000+ contacts) mailing lists.

See page 6 for categorised sends by volume.

Half 2 - 2009: 25.16%

Half 1- 2010: 23.48%


Unique Open Rates by Send Volumes

WhatTo remove any bias associated with large sends we have broken the Send Volumes into three categories based on the number of contacts:

5 - 499 500 - 999 1,000+

FindingsEven though each category has experienced a drop in open rates it is noticeable that bigger databases (1000+) which dropped by 1.76% have suffered more severely than smaller databases (500-999) which have dropped 1.19% and (5-499) 0.72%.

InterpretationsWhen compared to the average Open Rate of 23.48%, sending to smaller (presumably cleaner and/or more segmented) databases, has a positive and substantial effect on Open Rates.

We attribute this result to three main factors:

1. Marketers are focusing more on growing databases with the right contacts rather than a large number of contacts who may have no interest in their product.

2. Marketers have access to more detailed information and tools that allow them to profi le and segment databases.

3. As a result of (1) and (2), marketers have become savvier in their approach to marketing and no longer use a one size fi ts all approach. The consumer is then more willing to respond to emails that appeal to his/her own interests.

Half 2 - 2010

5 - 499: 34.96%

500 - 999: 31.49%

1,000+: 24.74%

Half 1 - 2010

5 - 499: 34.24%

500 - 999: 30.30%

1,000+: 22.98%


Unique Open Rates by Industry

WhatThis table displays Unique Open Rates for emails sent by key industry sectors for H2 2009 and H1 2010.

FindingsThe industry with the highest Unique Open Rates for H1 2010 was Mining/Oil/Gas which may in part be due to the increase in general interest in mining during the BP oil crisis.

Construction took over Sales and Marketing as the industry with the lowest open rate of 14.45%.

Legal experienced the largest increase in unique open rates - 7.75% overall.

Industry Open RateH2 2009 (%)

Open RateH1 2010 (%)

% ChangeH2 2009 to H1 2010

Mining/Oil/Gas 33.24 38.01 4.77

Legal 24.79 32.54 7.75

Government/Defence 34.77 30.37 4.4

Accounting 31.30 30.28 1.02

Insurance and Superannuation 28.57 29.81 1.24

Call Centre/Customer Service 30.25 28.07 2.18

Primary Industry 31.78 28.43 3.35

Manufacturing/Operations 27.13 28.39 1.26

Banking and Financial Services 29.91 27.68 2.23

Real Estate and Property 25.44 26.09 0.65

Trades and Services 27.04 25.22 1.82

Retail and Consumer Products 24.77 25.01 0.24

Education and Training 25.26 23.85 1.41

Engineering 24.89 23.49 1.4

Advertising/Media/Entertainment 26.45 22.86 3.59

Transport and Logistics 26.94 22.81 4.13

IT and Telecommunications 20.44 22.38 1.94

Hospitality and Tourism 22.61 22.26 0.35

Administration 27.84 22.09 5.75

Other 22.80 21.69 1.11

Community and Sport 22.37 21.49 0.88

Consulting and Corporate Strategy 24.15 20.91 3.24

Health care and medical 21.39 19.97 1.42

Human Resources and Recruitment 21.90 18.79 3.11

Science and Technology 17.56 18.24 0.68

Sales and Marketing 17.26 18.21 0.95

Construction 19.21 14.45 4.76

Half 2 - 2009: Left Column

Half 1 - 2010: Right Column

Open Rates Increase:

Open Rates Decrease:


Unique Click Through Rates

WhatThis chart displays the total number of ‘unique link’ clicks as a percentage of the total number of emails sent.

FindingsUnique CTRs across all industries, domains and send volumes were lower than the second half of 2009 by 0.69%.

Half 2 - 2009: 5.46%

Half 1 - 2010: 4.77%

Further InformationFor further information about how email design can help you to improve your click through rates Vision 6 has produced a whitepaper “The A-Z of Email Design”. This may be downloaded for free from http://www.vision6.com.au/whitepapers.html


Unique Click Through Rates by Send Volumes

WhatThis chart displays unique link clicks as a percentage of the total number of emails sent, whereby send volumes are broken into three categories based on the number of contacts:

5 - 499 500 - 999 1,000+

FindingsUnique CTRs were mostly unchanged in each of the two smaller send categories with the 1000+ category experiencing a drop of 0.73% down to 4.59%.

InterpretationsWhen compared to the average unique CTR of 4.77%, sending to smaller list sizes (presumably cleaner and/or more segmented) has a positive and substantial effect on CTRs.

Half 2 - 2009

5 - 499: 8.86%

500 - 999: 7.74%

1,000+: 5.32%

Half 1 - 2010

5 - 499: 8.54%

500 - 999: 7.70%

1,000+: 4.59%


Unique Click Through Rates by Industry

WhatThis table displays Unique Click Through Rates experienced by each industry for H2 2009 and H1 2010.

FindingsThe industry with the lowest click through rates was Construction with a fi gure of 2.18%.

Insurance and Superannuation achieved the greatest improvement since H2 2009 with their open rate increasing by 1.03%.

Interpretation Even though the top three industries have all experienced a decrease in click-through rates they remained in the top three places. This is generally where they have remained over the last four years.

This may be because these industries are generally emailing highly engaged audiences such as shareholders, employees and clients requesting help and/ or support.

Industry Click Through RateH2 2009 (%)

Click Through RateH1 2010 (%)

% ChangeH2 2009 to H1 2010

Call Centre/Customer Service 12.03 9.49 2.54

Mining/Oil/Gas 13.20 9.17 4.03

Government/Defence 8.94 8.86 0.08

Accounting 10.23 8.66 1.57




Legal 5.26 6.26 1.00

Manufacturing/Operations 5.81 5.81 0.00








Other 4.49 4.67 0.18



Advertising/Media/Entertainment 7.46 4.24 3.22

Health care and medical 3.65 4.02 0.37









CTR Increase:

CTR Decrease:


Click Through Rate Relative to Open Rate

WhatThis chart displays average unique CTR as a percentage of the total number of unique opened emails.

RelevanceThis fi gure indicates how responsive the recipients who have opened an email are, giving a direct measure of the effectiveness of the email’s links and calls to action.

Half 2 - 2009: 21.72%

Half 1 - 2010: 20.34%


Bounce Rates

WhatThis chart displays the total number of bounced emails as a percentage of the total number of emails sent.

Bounce Rates are often used as a key measure of deliverability and include permanent and temporary bounces.

FindingsFor the fi rst half of 2010 bounce rates decreased noticeably to 5.75%. The gradual decrease in bounce rates is a consistent trend which has been documented since the beginning of these reports in 2006 when the average bounce rate was 12.29%.

Key MessagesTo minimise bounce rates (increase deliverability) keep a clean database.

Update or delete any permanently bounced addresses. Implement double opt-in; use a known From Address and keep the email content and subject line relevant to your recipients.

If your vendor provides one, use a content analysis tool to test your emails against Spam Filters.

Half 2 - 2009: 6.29%

Half 1 - 2010: 5.75%

Further InformationFor further information about email deliverability Vision 6 has produced a whitepaper on “Understanding & Improving Email Deliverability”. This may be downloaded for free from http://www.vision6.com.au/whitepapers.html


Bounce Rates by Send Volumes

WhatThis chart displays the total number of bounced messages as a percentage of the total amount of emails sent. Send volumes are broken into three categories based on the number of contacts:

5 - 499 500 - 999 1,000+

FindingsH1 2010 saw a further decrease in bounce rates across all categories when compared to previous years.

InterpretationsWith signifi cant reductions across the board, the results here seem to indicate larger lists have had the most ‘spring cleaning’ carried out on them.

There is now much less of a discrepancy between small and large lists due to the improvement in larger lists.

Half 2 - 2009

5 - 499: 6.52%

500 - 999: 6.77%

1,000+: 6.27%

Half 1 - 2010

5 - 499: 6.10%

500 - 999: 6.19%

1,000+: 5.73%


Bounce Rates by Industry

WhatThis table displays Bounce Rates by industry.

FindingsAccounting achieved the lowest bounce rate (2.56%), well under half of the overall average bounce rate.

Sales and Marketing showed the greatest improvement reducing their bounce rate by 7.14%.

Industry Bounce RateH2 2009 (%)

Bounce RateH1 2010 (%)

% ChangeH1 to H2 2009

Accounting 4.42 2.56 1.86

Call Centre/ Customer Service 4.55 3.4 1.15

Legal 2.54 3.64 1.10




Advertising/ Media/ Entertainment 5.38 5.32 0.06

Other 6.36 5.5 0.86




Government/ Defence 5.47 6.48 1.01

Mining/Oil/Gas 5.14 6.61 1.47






Healthcare and medial 7.13 7.56 0.43




Manufacturing/ Operations 7.66 8.53 0.87







Bounce Rates Decrease:

Bounce Rates Increase:


Send Volumes, Open & CTR for the Top 15 Domains

WhatThese charts display the top 15 domains by send volume and their associated Open Rates and CTRs.

FindingsThe top 15 domains are all web and ISP based accounts. No business or government domain was listed in the top 15.

hotmail.com once again received almost fi ve times as many emails as any other domain (22.94%) with fi gures in line with H2 2009. Gmail went from having the lowest open rates to one of the highest.

bigpond and iprimus achieved the highest average Open Rates at 32.67% and 32.27%.

Half 1 - 2010

Half 2 - 2009

% Volume 2010

% Volume 2009

% Opened

% Clicked


Open, CTR & Emails Sent by Day

WhatThese charts display the average Open Rates and CTRs by day, and the total amount of emails sent on each day for the fi rst half of 2010 and the second half of 2009.

FindingsTuesday led as the weekday with the highest percentage open rate at 24%, however overall open rates throughout the week have fl attened out considerably.

Weekdays continue to see fairly even send rates with a considerable drop on Mondays. This may be due to senders being smart and realising that Monday is a very high volume day for people who do not check emails on the weekend.

Thursday was the day on which the most emails were sent, despite having fairly average open and click through rates.

Half 1 - 2010

Half 2 - 2009

% Volume 2010

% Volume 2009

% Opened

% Clicked


Time Taken to Open Emails

WhatThis chart displays the amount of time it takes for recipients to open the email after it has been received.

Findings56.1% of all recipients who will open an email have done so within 8 hours of delivery. This is an increase from 50.9% in the second half of 2009 and may be attributed to an increase in the number of people using mobile devices to check email.

76.9% are opened within 24 hours.

85% of recipients will open your email within two days.

Key MessageGenerally, most of your recipients will open your email within the fi rst 24 hours. Therefore, be prepared to receive the majority of responses to your email campaign within the fi rst few days after delivery.

However, some recipients may not open your email for several weeks. Therefore, it is important to keep landing pages and associated campaign media active during this period.

Half 2 - 2009

Half 1 - 2010


Vision 6 is a provider of powerful eMarketing solutions. The company was founded in

2001 and it’s product VeMail, enables businesses of all sizes to create, send and track

email and SMS communications.

As a part of Vision 6’s commitment to empower its customers to run relevant and

engaging campaigns, Vision 6 offers free interactive online training and an online

community-based knowledge centre.

Vision 6 also authors and distributes free best practice whitepapers; runs specialist

events such as EMSA, Australia’s only dedicated email marketing summit and

produces the Australian Email Marketing Metrics Report twice a year.

For more information or to access a free trial of our software, visit www.vision6.com.au

or phone +61 7 3257 3906. For further information about this report please, contact Lisa

Renneisen at [email protected].

CTRs — Click Through Rates.

EDM — Electronic Direct Marketing.

ISP — Internet Service Provider, e.g. BigPond.

Open Rate — Measures the number of times an email is opened by a recipient as a percentage of the total number of emails sent.

CTR Relative to Open — Measures the CTR as a percentage of the total number of unique opened emails.

Permanent Bounce — Usually means the email address is incorrect or is no longer in operation – sometimes referred to as a Hard Bounce.

Temporary Bounce — Usually means the email address is temporarily unavailable. The most common Temporary Bounce reasons are ‘Server Time Expired’ (for receiving ISP), ‘Delivery Time Expired’ (for sending ISP) and ‘Mailbox Full’ – sometimes referred to as a Soft Bounce.

Unique CTR — Measures the fi rst time a link is clicked by a recipient as a percentage of the total number of emails sent.

Unique Open Rate — Measures the fi rst time an email is opened by a recipient as a percentage of the total number of emails sent.

Glossary & Acronyms About Vision 6

ground floor 47 warner street

fortitude valley qld 4006 australia

www.vision6.com.au

[email protected]

+61 7 3257 3906

+61 7 3257 3907

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