Email Marketing Statistics and Metrics

Send, Open and Click-Throughs

• Most Popular Days to Send
• Email Send Times
• Open Times
• Sample Click-To-Open Rates
• Wednesday is "Opening Day"

Email Creative and Personalization

• Poor Rendering Creates 'Disappointing Dialogue’
• How Relevance Boosts Campaign Performance
• Text Drives More Email Click-Throughs Than Images
• Message Size, Number of Links, Subject Line Length
• Personalization

Email Delivery and ISPs

• AIM.com Leads in Inbox Delivery
• Delivery Rates Still Vex Marketers
• Email Deliverability Inches Up in 2006
• Deliverability Falls in U.S.; Gains in Europe
• PeoplePC, EarthLink Top Inbox Delivery
• Deliverability by ISP
• Which ISPs and Email Clients Block Images
• Sample Email List Composition by ISP

Email Privacy and Regulatory Compliance

• Percentage of E-Retailers Who Are Compliant With CAN-SPAM Opt-Out Provisions
• CAN-SPAM Compliance

Consumer Habits and Email Penetration

• How Subscribers Dealt with Holiday Email Flood
• 2007 Consumer Email Snapshot
• Consumer 'Email Insecurity' Documented
• Spam Angst Reduced
• Email Users Savvier Than You Think
• Time of Day Online Users Check Personal Emails at Work
• When and Where Online Users Check Their Email
• Online Users Who Check Email While On Vacation
• Email Penetration Among Internet Users
• Total Number of Email Users in the U.S.
• Email Activity Among Internet Users

Email Marketing Industry Growth and Trends

• Email is Cheapest in Cost per Order
• E-Marketers Advancing Their Tactics
• Why Email Is Still No. 1 with Marketers
• Email is Alive, Well and Improving
• Email Still Rules ROI
• Email Marketing Growing; Spam Fading
• Advanced Tactics Boost Click Rates
• Integrating Web Analytics With Email Programs Improves Results
• Trend of Email Volume in the U.S.
• Compounded Annual Growth Rate for Email
• Email Marketing vs TV Advertising
• Email Outpulls Catalogs for Direct Marketer Web Sites

Retail Email Marketing

• Email Marketers Set Cyber Monday Record
• Few Retailers Require Email Confirmation
• Marketers Bank on Email for Holiday 2006
• Holiday Emails Generate Shopper Discontent
• Percentage of E-Retailers Who Are Compliant With CAN-SPAM Opt-Out Provisions
• Email Click-Through Rates For E-Retailers
• Email Conversion Rates For E-Retailers
• E-Retailers' Percent of Online Sales Attributed to Email Marketing
• Reasons E-Retailers Are Growing Their Email Marketing
• Email Activity by E-Retailers Now Versus A Year Ago
• Subject Lines That Will Motivate Moms to Open a Retail Email Message
• How Often Moms Would Like to Be Notified By Retail Emails
• Product Information in Retail Emails That Will Motivate Moms to Click
• Eretailer Email Frequency

Most Popular Days to Send

Send Days

Email Send Times

Send Times

Open Times

Open Times

Sample Click-To-Open Rates

Open and click-through rates, the most commonly used and benchmarked email marketing metrics, provide marketers with a quick and reasonably accurate snapshot of how an email message performed. By combining these two metrics into the click-to-open rate, however, marketers have an additional and perhaps better tool to analyze and benchmark email performance.

Click-to-open rate (CTOR) is simply the ratio of unique clicks as a percentage of unique opens. The CTOR measures how effective your email message was in motivating recipients who opened it, to then click a link. In other words, the click-to-open rate expresses the measure of click-through rates as a percentage of messages opened, instead of messages delivered.

Click-To-Open Rates

• The CTOR's greatest value may be as a diagnostic tool for email messages. For example, if you compare the CTOR across ISPs, key domains or customer segments you might uncover potential issues or trends that need to be addressed. Looking at the chart above, the Ecommerce Email CTOR for the AOL domain is clearly out of line with the rest of the domains. The click-through rate of 8.2% is not far below the average for the message, but the open rate is well below the average. This would strongly suggest that the actual open rate for the AOL segment is much higher. In this case, the low reported open rate is probably due to a combination of text emails and blocked images.
• As you can see in the chart above, the CTOR varied very little, 25%-27% (excluding Earthlink), while open and click-through rates varied widely. In this case, regardless of ISP (again excluding Earthlink), about one-fourth of recipients who opened the newsletter also clicked on a link. So despite wide variances in open and click-through rates, this message actually motivated most all recipient segments to click at the same rate. Additionally, the overall CTOR for this message was 25 percent as compared to an historical average for this newsletter of 26 percent.
• Learn more about the CTOR in the article Click-to-Open Rate: A Better Metric?

Wednesday is "Opening Day"

Open Days

Poor Rendering Creates 'Disappointing Dialogue’

A sizable percentage of business and consumer email marketers fail to connect with their readers because they still send out email messages that do not render correctly, either because of blocked images or nonfunctioning links, according to an Email Experience Council study of 1,000 business and consumer mailings sent in the fourth quarter of 2006. Poor rendering hurts relevance and brand identity and creates a "dialogue that disappoints," according to Andy Goldman, OgilvyOne.

21%: Percentage of business and consumer email messages that showed up completely blank when images were turned off in email clients; most of these emails were promotional in nature and sent to drive sales

28%: Percentage of email messages sent with nonfunctioning links; spread equally over business and consumer mailings and prevalent within product-related, event and acquisition-based emails

Source: "The 2007 Rendering Report," published January 2007, the Email Experience Council

How Relevance Boosts Campaign Performance

Campaigns that target based on Web-site user clickstream data generate conversion rates that outperform untargeted broadcast campaigns by nearly 4 to 1, according to a recent Jupiter Research report promoting use of targeting devices beyond basic personalization and segmentation.

How targeting affects campaign performance:

Untargeted broadcast emails
Open rate: 20%
Avg. CTR: 9.5%
Avg. conversion rate: 1.1%

Text Drives More Email Click-Throughs Than Images

A new report, "Email Marketing Content Best Practices: Identifying the Impact of Content on Response Behavior," based on a Jupiter Research/IPSOS survey of 1,166 consumer recipients on what prompted them to open and respond to email marketing messages revealed the following:

• 54%: Products or services featured
• 40%: Written copy
• 35%: Subject line
• 33%: Compelling offers (e.g. discounts, free shipping)
• 12%: A single large image
• 9%: Multiple smaller images
• 6%: Search box within the email
• 3%: Recipients get text-only email

Message Size, Number of Links, Subject Line Length

Email marketers seeking to increase their open and click-through rates would be wise to keep subject lines short and hyperlinks plentiful, according to recent analysis by EmailLabs. The key findings: subject lines shorter than 50 characters in length, as well as an increased number of hyperlinks, led to increased open and click-through rates. Message size did not appear to be a significant factor in boosting rates, although messages in the 20 to 79 KB size range had slightly higher open and click-through rates than messages from 3 to 19 KBs.

Message Size, Number of Links, Subject Line Length

• Zero to 49 character subject lines had an open-rate 12.5 percent higher than the 50+ character subject lines. Click-through rates for the zero to 49 character group were 75 percent higher than the 50+ group.
• In general, email marketers should limit the length of their subject lines to less than 50 characters, and should include as many hyperlinks as possible. In addition to a shorter subject line being visible in its entirety in most email clients, recipients comprehend shorter subject lines more easily and quickly.
• Messages in the 20 to 79 KB size range had open rates and click-through rates of 3.9 percent and 7.9 percent higher than messages in the 3 to 9 KB range. Interestingly, although only 1.4 percent of messages sent were less than three KB, those messages had the highest average open rate, bounce rate and unsubscribe rate.
• Marketers shouldn't be too concerned with the size of their messages, with our analysis not revealing any negative effect on performance from larger-sized messages. That being said, the general rule of thumb to try and limit messages to 40 to 50 KB is not a bad idea due to size limits on the receiving end.
• Though these findings are compelling, it is essential that email marketers conduct split tests across key variables to determine what works best for their specific customers and subscribers.

Personalization

• Only 4 percent of marketers personalized messages.
• Of marketers who do personalize, 76 percent use five data points or less in the personalization process.

AIM.com Leads in Inbox Delivery

The second-quarter deliverability survey by Lyris, EmailLabs sister company, shows AIM.com scored the highest in delivering permission email to the inbox rather than the junk folder or blocking it. The top 10 ISPs for inbox placement all scored above 80% but not all the market-leading email handlers made the list. Hotmail scored fourth-worst, with only 59.4% reaching the inbox.

Top 10 ISPs for Inbox Delivery

Source: ISP Deliverability Report Card Q2 2007

Delivery Rates Still Vex Marketers

Although general email delivery rates have edged up over the years, just over 2 of 5 marketers surveyed in a new Internet Retailer report are seeing unacceptably low delivery rates, defined as below 80%.

Here’s how marketers are reporting their delivery rates, defined as total percentage of email message delivered minus bounced and blocked messages:

Email Delivery Rates Reported By Marketers

Email Deliverability Inches Up in 2006

ISPs and corporate spam filters diverted slightly less permission email in the first half of 2006 compared with both halves of 2005. Return Path, which compiled the statistics, said ISPs are blocking and filtering more accurately, but emailers also are beginning to understand how their reputations affect deliverability.

1. Overall block rates:

Overall Block Rates

2. Which ISP blocks the most email?

Blocks by ISP

Source: Return Path Email Blocking and Filtering Report

Deliverability Falls in U.S.; Gains in Europe

Gross deliverability rates fell in the U.S. in the first three months of 2006 but rose in Europe, according to the quarterly survey by EmailLabs' sister company, Lyris Technologies Inc. Lyris attributed the U.S. drop to poor deliverability at 3 providers.

Deliverability Falls in U.S.; Gains in Europe

PeoplePC, EarthLink Top Inbox Delivery

Although Yahoo!, AOL and Hotmail dominate email delivery channels, only Yahoo! scored in the top 10 of ISPs for delivery of email to the inbox, according to Lyris Technologies' Q4 2005 delivery scorecard. The email giant scored fourth, behind PeoplePC.com, EarthLink.net and usa.net but placed first for false positives (routing permission email to the spam folder instead of the inbox). Lyris based its figures on opt-in commercial email messages sent to 40 U.S. and European domains, from Oct. 1 to Dec 31:

Sample Etailer Conversion Metrics

Deliverability by ISP

Across all ISPs monitored by Pivotal Veracity between Jan 25 - Feb 25 2005, delivery metrics for emailers was 84.4% Inbox, 5.6% Bulk Folder and 10.0% Missing. Deliverability by selected ISPs for Jan 1 - Feb 25 2005 was as follows:

Deliverability by ISP Jan 1-Feb 25 2005

The email delivery auditing company also noted:

• 9 out of 10 HTML emails are not W3C HTML compliant, which can cause rendering as well as delivery issues, particularly at MSN and Hotmail.
• When emails are blocked, ISPs may not send the emailer bounce notices, and in many cases, they will discard the messages without informing the emailer the email was blocked.

Which ISPs and Email Clients Block Images

The latest versions of many major ISPs' e-mail interfaces and e-mail clients automatically block any external image, as detailed in the chart below.

Image Blocking by Major ISPs & E-mail Clients

CAN-SPAM Compliance

Permission Marketers - Compliance with CAN-SPAM

Sample Email List Composition by ISP

Below is the composition by major ISP/e-mail provider of a few of EmailLabs' business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) clients:

List Members by ISP (%)

How Subscribers Dealt with Holiday Email Flood

The 2008 Holiday Email Survey by Return Path found 76.8% of respondents said they got more email than usual in the holiday season, although only 13% said the amount was overwhelming. However, recipients also were clear about how they managed the excess email:

How Subscribers Managed Excess Email

Source: Fourth Annual Holiday Email Consumer Survey 2008, published by Return Path

2007 Consumer Email Snapshot

Email statistics presented by JupiterResearch vice president David Daniels, at the Email Insider Summit in Park City, Utah, Dec. 2007:

How Do Online Consumers Spend Their Time?

87%: Read email
70%: Search for information
64%: Do search
60%: Shop
37%: Use instant messaging

Email Usage

274: Average number of personal emails weekly
304: Average number of business emails weekly
26%: Opt-in email campaigns as percentage of total inbox email
74%: Email users with 2 email accounts
18%: Email users who use mobile devices to sort email

Unsubscribing Behavior

53% Say email is irrelevant
40% Say email comes too often
26% Unsubscribe using spam button

Consumer 'Email Insecurity' Documented

More than half of consumer email users use at least two email addresses, apparently to protect themselves from spam and cybercrime, according to an October 2007 survey by email reputation service Habeas and market research firm Ipsos that found what it called a high "email insecurity factor" among regular email users.

Among the findings:

73%: Survey participants who use email daily
62%: Concerned about becoming victims of fraud or cybercrime
60%: Say spam is becoming worse
83%: Say their email client's user interface has a spam button
23%: Say their email service has fraud detection
64%: Say permission/personal email regularly get routed to the spam folder or blocked

"Despite the popularity, ubiquity, cost-effectiveness and targeted nature of email, online relationships and the interactions that enable them are very fragile," said Habeas CEO Des Cahill. "If individuals, marketers, businesses and Web 2.0 communities cannot place their trust in email, the Internet's premier 'killer app' will not reach its full potential as these groups could refrain from using it for higher value interactions."

Source: Habeas.com

Spam Angst Reduced

The Pew Internet and American Life Project reported survey results are giving email marketers and publisher a reason to grin: Americans seem to be less bothered by junk email than they were four years ago.

18%: Spam is a big problem (25% in 2003)
51%: Spam is annoying (57% in 2003)
26%: Spam is not a problem at all (16% in 2003)

More Americans say they can tell good email from spam:

68%: Almost never unintentionally open spam (63% in 2003)
27%: Sometimes open spam email by accident (34% in 2003)

More users say they can manage email better:

71%: Use outside email filters
41%: Use their own filters
44%: Worked to make their email address harder to find
51%: Check junk-mail folders at least occasionally
46%: Never check bulk folders

Source: “Spam 2007,” Pew Internet and American Life Project

Email Users Savvier Than You Think

Eight out of 10 email subscribers say they know exactly what they're doing when they hit the "Report Spam" button in their email clients, according to a new study by the Email Sender and Provider Coalition. The key take away is the importance of recognition by recipients of the From and Subject lines for making decisions on how the treat email.

Other results from the survey, which assessed email users' attitudes and preferences toward email management:

83%: Used the Report Spam button in their email clients at least once
80%: Use it without opening the message
73%: Base decision on the "from" line
69%: Base decision on subject line
20%: Use the spam button to unsubscribe from the mailing

Source: ESPC

Time of Day Online Users Check Personal Emails at Work

Time of Day Online Users Check Personal Emails at Work

When and Where Online Users Check Their Email

When U.S. Online Users Check Their Email

Where U.S. Online Users Check Their Email

Online Users Who Check Email While On Vacation

The number of online users who check email while on vacation, as reported by eMarketer:

Online Users Who Check Email While on Vacation

Email Penetration Among Internet Users

Email penetration is at an all-time high of 91 percent among Internet users between the ages of 18 and 64, as reported by eMarketer. Search has the second highest penetration among Internet users.

Total Number of Email Users in the U.S.

In the US alone, 88% of adult Internet users have personal e-mail accounts. Further, 46% of them have e-mail access at work. Added together, eMarketer estimates that 147 million people across the country use e-mail, almost every day.

Email Activity Among Internet Users

According to eMarketer, a Pew Internet & American Life Project survey found that 91% of Internet users between the ages of 18 and 64 send or read e-mail, and an even higher number of users ages 65 or older do the same. The only other activity to even approach e-mail's popularity is using a search engine to find information.

Email is Cheapest in Cost per Order

Online Marketing Mediums and Average Cost Per Order

Source: “State of Retailing Online 2007” by Shop.org of the National Retail Foundation with Forrester Research, reported in Direct.

E-Marketers Advancing Their Tactics

An Internet Retailer survey found email marketers are taking positive steps to improve their email marketing effectiveness and boost deliverability:

79.1%: Feature the company name prominently in the message “from” line

64.0%: Keep key message points high up in the message body to be seen when the message is viewed in the preview pane

63.7%: Say they are trying to create the right mix of graphics and content in the message.

62.0%: Say they watch the message size to avoid sending messages that consume too much bandwidth.

56.6%: Segment mailing lists by one or more demographic factors, including age, sex, income and buying history.

Source: Internet Retail Survey on Email Marketing, May 2007

Why Email Is Still No. 1 with Marketers

Why did 83.2% of marketers in a February survey by Datran Media list email as their most important advertising tactic for 2007? Mainly because of its ability to drive incremental revenue, a reason cited by 55.3% of respondents:

1. Most Important Advertising Tactics for 2007

Important Tactics for 2007

2. Most Important Reasons Why Marketers Will Use Email in 2007

Important Reasons to Use Email

Source: Datran Media, February 2007

Email is Alive, Well and Improving

Email marketers, especially business marketers, remain bullish on email's performance despite the hype for new channels such as text messaging and podcasting. A MarketingSherpa study found 78% of business email marketers and 69% of consumer email marketers still think that email marketing is effective and its impact continues to grow, either "slowly" or "significantly."

Impact of Email

Increasing Significantly Increasing Slowly Not Changing Noticeably Slowly Declining Declining Significantly B-to-B Marketers 35.6% 42.4% 6.8% 13.6% 1.7% B-to-C Marketers 40.0% 29.1% 18.2% 10.9% 1.9% Source: MarketingSherpa Email Benchmark Survey, November 2006.

Email Still Rules ROI

Email Marketing Growing; Spam Fading

In a recent DM News article, JupiterReseach analyst David Daniels' snapshot of the 2006 email-marketing industry shows spending will grow, while the spam volume continues to fade slowly. However, email wrongly blocked by ISPs will continue to cost marketers about $1 for every $9 in an email-marketing budget:

1. Spending on email marketing will rise 7.5% this year, from $885 million in 2005 to $950 million.
2. Spam will decrease at a compounded annual rate of 9.4% a year through 2010 "but will remain a nuisance."
3. False positives -- email wrongly blocked at all levels of the email delivery channel -- will cost marketers $107 million this year.
4. HTML has nearly universal adoption among consumers: A Jupiter Research consumer survey found just 3% receive only text email.
5. It pays to ask for backup email addresses at registration: 60% of online consumers regularly use two or more email accounts.

Advanced Email Tactics Boost Click Rates

According to MarketingSherpa, click rates generally are higher for marketers who use advanced tactics such as dynamic content, testing different offers before mailing and segmentation by user data. Almost two-thirds of advanced-tactics marketers reported click rates over 10%, while click rates topped out at 10% for single-batch marketers.

Click Rates Using Advanced Tactics

Integrating Web Analytics With Email Programs Improves Results

In a recent Jupiter Research Report, marketers who integrate Web analytics with their email marketing programs improved the results of targeted email campaigns. The report states that using clickstream data on average produced open rates of 33%, click-through rates of 14% and conversion rates of 3.9% from targeted email campaigns. This was compared to mass mailing average open rates of 20%, click-through rates of 9.5% and conversion rates of 1.1%.

Trend of Email Volume in the U.S.

Email volume in the United States is projected to nearly double from 1.5 trillion in 2003, to 2.7 trillion in 2007, as reported by eMarketer.

Compounded Annual Growth Rate for Email

As reported by eMarketer, the compounded annual growth rate for email is 14.6 percent from 2002 through 2007, but after factoring in year-to-year increases in volume, the data shows that growth hit its peak in the early 2000's and has slowed slightly since.

Email Marketing vs TV Advertising

Research conducted by the UK marketing firm IPT in August and September 2004 suggests that consumers are showing a more favorable opinion of email marketing compared to TV advertising.

Most Effective Marcom Channel

Most Influential Aspect of a Markerting Email

Email outscored catalogs as a motivation to bring shoppers to a direct marketer's Web site in the latest wave of the quarterly online marketing survey conducted by Decision Direct Research, the online research arm of direct marketing service provider Millard Group.

For the quarter ended August 31, 2005, 81 percent of survey respondents reported that they were likely to visit a direct retailer's Web site after receiving an email, compared to 78 percent who said they were likely to surf there after getting a catalog in the mail. That discrepancy marks the first time in the quarterly survey's three-year history that email from a marketer outranked print books as a Web traffic driver.

About 67% of survey participants said they read at least three out of four promotional emails they receive from direct marketers.

The latest quarterly Online Co-op Survey from Decision Direct polled Internet shoppers from 37 multi-channel merchants and incorporated data from 47,000 completed customer surveys.

Email Marketers Set Cyber Monday Record

The Monday after Thanksgiving in the U.S. is continuing to grow as a counterpart to Black Friday, with 52% more retailers sending promotional email that day, according to data gathered by the email-marketing blog Retail Email:

Number of retailers in survey who sent Cyber Monday promotions
2007: 67%
2006: 44%

Number who sent promotional email the Sunday before:
2007: 25%
2006: 12%

Source: Chad White, Retail Email

Few Retailers Require Email Confirmation

The Direct Marketing Association’s Email Experience Council recently surveyed 118 retail email newsletters on subscription practices and found only 3% required subscribers to confirm their opt-in request, a step many consider an essential best practice in order to avoid mistyping or malicious subscriptions. The newsletters are those tracked by the Retail Email Blog Spot http://retailemail.blogspot.com/. Among other findings in the report:

55%: Require only email address at sign-up

45%: Offer link to privacy policy on registration page

43%: Offer one-click sign-up from the homepage

28%: Offer content tailored to specific interests or products

31%: Require a name in addition to email address at sign-up

18%: Require ZIP code at sign-up

16%: Request to be added to address books to boost rendering and deliverability

12%: Offer a text-only option

Source: DMA/EEC study, “2007 Retail Email Subscription Benchmark Study,” published July 25, 2007

Marketers Bank on Email Holiday 2006

With the holiday 2006 shopping season just around the corner, retail marketers will rely more heavily on email than other online channels to boost sales and build relationships, according to a survey by Web analytics provider WebTrends:

1. What are marketers doing to build or enhance customer relationships?

Percent of Initiative for 2006 Holiday

2. Where will marketers increase spending in online channels?

Percent of Initiative for 2006 Holiday

3. Overall, what is the most important demand-generation activity?

1. Email marketing 
2. Search engine marketing 
3. Search engine optimization

Source: WebTrends 2006 Online Retail Holiday Readiness Survey

Holiday Emails Generate Shopper Discontent

Although at least half of online shoppers in a Return Path email survey said they used email to buy or prospect for holiday gifts in 2005, they also said they got too much email from retailers and took more negative actions, such as reporting email as spam or unsubscribing:

Did you get the amount of email you were expecting?

Email Expectations 2005 2004 No, it was higher 43.5% 39.6% I didn't know what to expect 28.0% N/A Yes, it was as expected 22.2% 50.1%% I don't remember signing up for email 4.6% 10.2%

How did you deal with excess email?

Action Taken 2005 2004 I deleted the additional emails 68.0% 60.1% I reported the sender as a spammer to my ISP 33.6% 23.4% I unsubscribed 30.5% 27.1% No impact 19.3% 28.3%

Source: Return Path Second Annual Holiday Consumer Email Survey
January 2006

Percentage of E-Retailers Who Are Compliant With CAN-SPAM Opt-Out Provisions

In a recent study conducted by the FTC, 89% of E-Retailers are compliant with the CAN-SPAM opt-out provisions. The opt-out provisions, outlined in the CAN-SPAM act, gives consumers the right to stop receiving commercial email messages from a sender. To read more about the CAN-SPAM act, please click here.

Email Click-Through Rates For E-Retailers

Email Click-Through Rates (define) for e-retailers:

Email Click-Through Rates For E-Retailers

Email Conversion Rates For E-Retailers

Email Conversion Rates (define) for e-retailers:

Email Conversion Rates For E-Retailers

Sales Attributed to Email Marketing

Reasons E-Retailers Are Growing Their Email Marketing

Reasons E-Retailers Are Growing Their Email Marketing

Email Activity by E-Retailers

Email Activity by E-Retailers Now Versus A Year Ago

Subject Lines That Will Motivate Moms to Open a Retail Email Message

Moms place significant value on discounts and coupons. Subject lines that emphasize on saving money will most likely motivate Moms to open retail email messages:

Subject Lines That Will Motivate Moms to Open a Retail Email

Register to download the complete report "Effective Tactics for Email Marketing to Moms."

How Often Moms Would Like to Be Notified By Retail Emails

Moms prefer to be notified by retail emails about promotions and coupons on a weekly and monthly basis:

How Often Moms Would Like to Be Notified By Retail Emails

Register to download the complete report "Effective Tactics for Email Marketing to Moms."

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