Legitimate e-mail marketing skirting spam crisis, says DoubleClick

Despite increasing concerns over spam, both e-mail open rates and click-through rates increased from Q4 of last year to Q1 of 2003, according to new findings from DoubleClick Inc. Open rates rose 8% to 39.2% from 36.4%, while click-through rose 11% to 8.9% from 8%.

That’s good news for legitimate marketers worried that spam is crowding out their permission-based communications, and also indicates consumers are differentiating between such e-mails and spam, says DoubleClick. “The spam crisis is having less impact on the performance of legitimate marketers than many of us had feared,” says Eric Kirby, vice president of strategic services at DoubleClick. “The data underscore the importance of the relationship that legitimate marketers have with their customers. Marketers can build upon these relationships by asking customers about the type of content they would like to receive as well as how often they want to be contacted.”

Bounce-back rates declined 7.5% to 12.5% in Q1 from 13.5% in last year’s Q4, reflecting marketers` emphasis on good list hygiene practices, according to DoubleClick’s report. Soft bounces-–unsuccessful delivery due to reasons such as full inbox—accounted for 47% of all bounce backs, while hard bounce backs-–received when an e-mail address is no longer valid--accounted for the remaining 53%.