CAN-Spam legislation has had little impact on the health of permission-based e-mail marketing, according to DoubleClick’s Inc.’s Q1 Email Trend Report, though open rates and click-through rates did decline slightly in the first quarter from last year’s fourth quarter.
The first quarter of this year--the first full quarter following the implementation of CAN-Spam last year--saw open rates drop to an average 38.2% from 39.2% and click-through rates to 8.4% from 8.9% in the first quarter of 2003. However, overall delivery rates—measured as the number of e-mails sent minus the hard and soft bounce-back rate—rose to 88.8% from 87.5%.
Revenue per e-mail delivered in the first quarter declined to 23 cents from 28 cents a year earlier. Average order size declined year over year, to $92 from $105. E-mail productivity, defined as the click-to-conversion rate, was stable at 3.2% in the first quarter versus 3.5% a year ago.
Among individual categories of e-mail marketers, the retail/catalog and business publisher categories recorded the highest delivery rates, with both groups reaching a 91.6% delivery rate. However, retail/catalog’s open rates and click-through rates both fell from the previous year—to 34.1% from 38.5% and to 7.1% from 7.6%, respectively.
By contrast, the business publisher category saw an increase in both open rates and click-through rates: to 39.2% from 38.1% and to 7.3% from 6.6%, respectively.
The travel category experienced the greatest improvement in delivery rates, rising to 90.7% in Q1 from 65.1% in the year-ago quarter. While open rates declined to 40.1% from 43.4% a year ago, the click-through rate in the travel category remained flat at 8.3% compared with 8.4% the previous year.
Financial services marketers recorded a slight increase in delivery rates year over year, to 84.5% from 84%. Despite a decline in open rates, to 40.1% from 43.4% year over year, click-through rates jumped to 11.8% from 7.8% a year earlier. The consumer publisher and consumer products and services categories both had higher than average click through rates at 9.6% and 9.5%, respectively, compared to the 8.4% average. For consumer products and services, however, that represented a decline from 14% a year earlier.
Eric Kirby, vice president and general manager of strategic services at DoubleClick, says the trend data show “phenomenal stability” over the past two years. “Considering the changes that have occurred in e-mail marketing and in particular at the regulatory level, it is encouraging to see the continued performance that legitimate marketers are enjoying by using e-mail to communicate with their customers and build customer relationships and loyalty,” he says.
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