More recipients are clicking on marketing e-mail, survey finds

With open rates holding steady in the third quarter from Q2, and click-through rates up quarter over quarter, e-mail marketing should be a successful sales channel for the holidays, according to a new report from online ad measurement firm DoubleClick Inc.

The open rate on e-mails tracked through DoubleClick’s DARTmail e-mail delivery technology was 37.3% in Q3, about the same as 37.6% in the second quarter. Click-through rates increased to 8.5% in Q3 from 7.5% in Q2.

Meanwhile, bounceback rates, calculated when an e-mail sender receives a message indicating that an e-mail has not been delivered, declined from an historic high of 13.6% in Q2 to 13.3% in the third quarter. The high bounceback rate likely reflects full in-boxes, size limits for in-boxes and changes of address, according to DoubleClick.

The click-through rate on retailer and catalog e-mails was well below average and more than a third below the highest category, equaling 6.9% in the third quarter, up from 6.1% in Q2.

Consumer publishing companies experienced the highest click-through rates, at 11.3%, up from 9.1%. Next highest was consumer products and services, which includes mostly consumer packaged goods manufacturers, with a 10% rate, up from 9.4%. Business products and services experienced a 7.8% rate, up from 7.5% in Q2.

In other findings, HTML e-mails outperformed text e-mails, generating an 11.3% click-through rate across categories versus 6% for text e-mail. Consistent with the second quarter, Tuesday remained the most popular day for sending marketing email in Q3, with 24% of messages sent on Tuesday. Wednesday, the second most popular day for sending marketing e-mail overall, was the most popular day for retailers and catalogers, who generated 30.2% of marketing e-mail volume on Wednesdays in Q3.