With eMail Marketing, what is the average click through rate? Best day to eMail? etc. Thank you for the assistance.
Answers (13)
Garland B
President / CEO at Media Rake, Inc.
Best Answers in: Event Marketing and Promotions (1), Business Development (1), E-Commerce (1), Wireless (1)
Average CTR on email lists of 50,000 recipients or more is 3%-5%. Tuesday followed by Wednesday are the best days to email.
A successful click-through-rate really depends on the size of your list. I send out email blasts for clients with lists of 1,000-10,000 names and a click through rate from 11%-21% is very good. I have found the best days to send emails are on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Good morning John. There are a number of variables that when properly combined can yield a high open rate for any e-Blast. We maintain proprietary lists of our own that are scrubbed daily. Our customers experience 12%-38% open rates. The average falling between 12%-18%.
We have worked locally with Ford on some direct mail campaigns facilitated by Gary Byrd - Dallas Territory Sales Manager.
Please feel free to contact me directly at (972) 668-2603.
Thank you in advance for your considerations.
Regards,
Robert Brantzeg
VP Sales and Marketing
eMax Media, LLC
www.bestmaxmedia.com
John M
Experienced Marketer | Social Media and Search Engine Marketing | Devoted to Decisions based on Analysis and Results
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (1), Business Development (1)
Your best approach is probably to use your existing lists and test for your customers. I would expect that emails from FordDirect.com might see lower than average right now for vehicle offers, but better than average if the offers are service-or parts-related. In fact, I think the service department will likely be the focus of a smart dealership for the next year. Keep your customers happy through quality service so that when the economy improves, they are loyal.
Boris M
Email Marketing Coach, YourEzineCoach.com
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (6), Direct Marketing (2), Business Development (1), Organizational Development (1), E-Commerce (1)
Instead of giving you meaningless statistics, may I suggest TESTING to see which day is best for YOUR particular audience. Then continue testing to find what type of subject line works best for your audience. Then continue to test the content and "call to action" etc.
Ina word: there's no silver bullet. Just keep on testing.
Depending on your Email Service Provider (if outsourced) or Email Marketing Software (if hosted in-house) you may be able to accomplish this automatically. Just ask you provider about "split testing."
Boris Mahovac - Email Marketing Consultant
P.S.
For people interested in stats: my clients' open rates vary from 15% to 97%, and CTR from 5%-30%
Links:
Nigel M
Managing Director, Morgan PR - creating reputations
Best Answers in: Event Marketing and Promotions (1), Business Development (1), Public Relations (1)
Nigel M suggests this expert on this topic:
Julian manages our email campaign and we are managing just shy of 50% so the guy knows his stuff! Of course, being in PR our content is killer too!
John, there are multiple variables effecting CTRs, including whether the email is sent to existing customers or new propspects, personalization, segmentation, etc. A good place for stats is email stat center, http://www.emailstatcenter.com/. Here are a few of their stats:
* The highest click through rates during Q2 2007 were Wednesday and Thursday (5%).- eROI, "Email Marketing Statistics By Day and Time" (July 2007)
*Click-through rates were between 4% and 5% during the workday, peaking at 7% at both 9 p.m. and 4 a.m. - eROI, "Email Marketing Statistics By Day and Time" (July 2007)
Take care,
Jennifer Dlugozima
Getmkeepm.typepad.com
Jessie P
Chief Marketing Officer - IT Business (Wipro Technologies & Wipro Infotech) at Wipro Ltd
in general, monday and friday aren't good days. but if you are trying to sell a personal product rather than business and you are sending the mails to a personal id, weekends may not be a bad idea. open rates depend a lot of the subject line. also, text mails often have higher read rates than html (which are obviously mass-mails).
John,
I know you're looking for a more general answer here but I really have to say, from experience at Property Line, or eMarket (email blast) product gets varying results, and most of the time the devil is in the details. Here's some considerations. Our emails are sent to a very highly specialized and targeted group (200,000 Commercial Real Estate professionals). Their membership on our site allows them to elect very specific emails to receive, this could pertain to their area of expertise (transaction types) or geographic concentration (by state even to MSA). By sorting through and allowing the recipient very specific categories to receive pushes your open rate much much higher! Your overall distribution stats may suffer in the process (you can't claim to send every marketing piece to your 100,000 members every time) but the targeted effect yields much better results. Your unsubscribes go down, click throughs go way up, and the buying customer receives more genuine lead results.
That being said, the actual product matters (of course) but even further, the subject line of the email itself is incredibly important. I always advise clients that the most powerful statement about the transaction that can be made under 50 characters (as subject lines get cut off easily) is the best way to go. (I know this seems obvious, but it's surprising how many people overlook the importance of this).
I even have one client that adds a bit of personal branding to his eMail marketing and he gets great results. He puts his company name first followed by the deal details. He regularly achieves an open rate of about 50% with a click through rate of about 25%.
Our averages depend on focus of the send, the tighter the focus, the higher the open/click through rate.
Links:
Clarification added 7 months ago:
Forgot to mention days (my apologies) Mondays and Fridays aren't necessarily bad, it just depends on the saturation of the receivers on those days. If your typical receiver gets 5 emails from you per day, and your CTR is holding steady at 10%, to get the same percentage you might want to scale back to 3 emails on Mondays and Fridays. The problem on these days is competing for attention, Mondays are usually the day to pull thing together for the week while Fridays are scrambling to get things done before the weekend or just preparing for the weekend in general (even taking the day off).
Hi John.
Great question. The 30th Edition of the DMA Statistical Fact Book features expanded numbers on email marketing as well as all the traditional. This annual publication of the Direct Marketing Association comes out each fall, so you can be sure of current numbers.
Here's a tiny link to the DMA bookstore http://preview.tinyurl.com/6dsao6
Hope it goes well!
Links:
John,
Our data indicates that average click through rates are around 6% and Tuesday and Friday are the days with the heaviest email volume.
Balint
[Thanks for the plug Nigel further up in this thread!]
Plenty of good responses already so I'll be brief.
Metrics can vary by industry. MailChimp (see link) has done an analysis of millions of emails and come up with a chart.
In terms of best day, until recently I was reading that Monday is a bad day but recent research shows this is not necessarily the case. I've recently sent out campaigns on a Monday with no adverse effects.
Testing is good as someone above has said but make sure it's a split test because if you compare two different historical campaigns sent on different days other factors may come into play such as subject line effectiveness or even whether it was a holiday period. I sometimes get lower open rates if it's a school holiday week and business recipients are on vacation.
Links:
John
Here are some averages based on industry for open rate, click-through rate, bounce rate and unsubscribe. They'll be listed in the following order after industry - Bounce / Open / Click through / Unsubscribe
Mfg CPG: 2.55% / 17.99% / 4.09% / 0.23%
Mfg Non-CPG: 10.45% / 22.08% / 4.44% / 0.29%
Retail Trade (Eating & Drinking): 7.95% / 35.19% / 6.78% / 0.49%
Retail Trade (Non-Eating & Drinking): 6.98% / 18.23% / 4.25% / 0.24%
Transportation: 4.97% / 19.00% / 4.03% / 0.07%
Transportation (Telephone Communications): 4.26%/ 18.06%/ 2.78%/ 0.23%
Wholesale Trade (Other Durable Goods): 4.27% / 15.79% / 3.77% / 0.08%
Wholesale Trade (Other Non-durable Goods): 10.52% / 4.72% /1 2.06% / 0.29%
Wholesale Trade (Professional & Commercial Equipment): 17.52% / 27.40% / 4.47% / 0.21%
There is truly no "best day" to email. The best way to determine which day is best to send is by testing - both A/B and Multi-Variate, measuring results of opens, click-throughs, conversion and comparing those stats with your most "engaged" subscribers. Which of your email recipients are most frequently producing the desired outcome or taking the desired action?
You might want to take a look at the following whitepapers;
2008 Channel Preference Survey
Messaging Behavior, Preferences, and Personas
The link is included below under web resources.
I can also provide results of a study conducted by our email strategist if you can provide your email address that addresses the best day to send. One can optimize the level of subscriber engagement and increase success with the basic stats (opens/CTR/conversion) if they:
-Ask for permission before sending.
-Let the subscriber determine what information and how often they want to receive it.
-Personalize the message and make sure its content is relevant to the recipient. Market segmentation certainly helps achieve this. Batch and blast will only help increase your unsubscribe rate.
If you would like to discuss further please contact me through linkedin. I am located in Pittsburgh.
Regards, Diana Engelmeyer
