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Article
2004
Email Trend Report
DoubleClick's Q3 2004 Email Trend
Report Shows Email Continuing to Drive Online Sales Continuing Email Productivity Shows Positive Signs for Holiday
Shopping Season
DoubleClick's Q3 2004 Email Trend Report reveals a significant increase
in the productivity of email for online merchants, with conversion rates
and number of orders per emails delivered both rising over the previous
year’s rates. For all mailers, the latest trend report shows continued
stability in overall email performance over the past two years, while
year-on-year figures show an increase in delivery rates and a decline in
open rates and click-through rates.
Email Continues to Drive Sales, Although Revenue per Email Has Declined
The Q3 Email trend report shows an increase in email click-to-purchase
conversion rates and number of orders per email delivered for Retail and
Catalog customers that track purchase activity through DARTmail. The
click-to-purchase conversion rate grew 23.5 percent or 0.8 points
year-over-year, from 3.4 percent in Q3 2003 to 4.2 percent in Q3 2004.
The average number of orders per email delivered also rose significantly
(17 percent or 0.04 points) year-over-year to 0.28 percent in Q3 ‘04
from 0.24 percent in Q3 ‘03. Despite these increases, two other measures
of email productivity showed declines. Revenue per email delivered
declined year-over-year to $0.21, a 19.2 percent drop, while the median
order size, declined 6.9 percent year-over-year to $94 in Q3 2004.
These figures, combined with a decline in click rates for Retail and
Catalog mailers (discussed below), suggest that email recipient behavior
is evolving with regards to promotional email from retailers. As the
email medium matures, recipients seem less likely to always click on a
promotional email, but when they do click, they are demonstrating that
they are more likely to be “in market” for products and services and
have a higher propensity to convert.
Overall Performance Remains Steady Despite year-over-year fluctuations,
overall email performance over the past two years remains stable with
regards to bounce rates, open rates and click-through rates. The average
delivery rate (emails sent minus the combined hard and soft bounce-back
rate) grew slightly year-over-year to 89.3 percent, an increase of 1.2
percent or 1.1 points from Q3 2003 (88.2%).
The average open rate (average of 34.3%) declined 7.5 percent from Q3
2003 (37.1%), while the average click-through rate (8.2%) decreased 10.9
percent during the same period (9.2%). Despite the year-on-year decline,
click-through rates have remained relatively stable over a period of two
years, down only 3.5 percent or 0.2 points in that time, from 8.5
percent in Q3 2002 to 8.3 percent in Q3 2004.
Email Performance by Category Delivery rates increased from the previous
year in almost every category, especially Travel, which rose 9 percent
or 7.8 points from 14.3 percent to 6.5 percent. Open rates (37.1% in the
Travel category) also dropped in almost every category, while
click-through rates (8.7%) rose marginally in Travel over the previous
year (from 8.5% to 8.7%)
Business Publisher was the only category that saw an increase, albeit
marginal, in open rates (from 38.2% to 38.3%). Business Products and
Services had the highest open rates at 41.5%, while Retail and Catalog
had the lowest open rates of any of the categories at 30.8%. The biggest
declines in open rates were in Consumer Products, which fell 22.8% from
43.9% to 33.9%, followed by Financial Services, down 14% from 44.3% to
38.1%, and Business Products and Services, down 10.4% from 46.3% to
41.5%.
Consumer Publisher (up 24.3%, from 9.3%) and Travel were the only
categories to record an increase in click-through rates. The biggest
declines in click rates were in Retail and Catalog (down 36.4%, from
8.8% to 5.6%), Financial Services (down 27.9%, from 10.6% to 7.6%) and
Consumer Products (down 22.6%, from 11.5% to 8.9%). The highest click
rate was for the Consumer Publisher category, at 11.6 percent, and the
lowest was Retail and Catalog at 5.6 percent.
“Once again, this Quarter’s data reveal the incredible effectiveness of
email as a marketing tool for online merchants and underscores the
maturity and stability of email as a communications vehicle,” said Kevin
Mabley, Director of Strategic Services at DoubleClick. “As more and more
marketers adopt and abide by best practices in list hygiene and continue
to pay attention to customer preferences, we predict response rates and
conversion trends will continue to hold strong – a great message for
merchants this holiday season.”
Methodology The DoubleClick Email Trend Report contains aggregate data
from DoubleClick’s DARTmail email delivery technology. The Q3 data are
based on billions of permission-based emails from hundreds of clients.
The full results are available to DoubleClick customers and an executive
summary is available at: www.doubleclick.net/us/knowledge
Performance metrics in this release relate to un-weighted averages
across all companies. This is done to provide a measure of average
company performance, due to the fact that very large mailers can bias
the overall and category results.
