Deliverability, unsubscriber rate improve - open rates slip

PushSend · Jun 29, 2011

Haven't posted any new articles in a while so I thought I'd look for a few as I hit "refresh" on my affiliate accounts!

Juan Martinez
June 27 2011

Overall delivery rates across all industry sectors increased two percentage points to 95% in 2010, compared with 2009, according to the Harte-Hanks Postfuture Index. Unsubscribe rates decreased from .32% in 2009 to .19% in 2010, and bounce rates averaged 5%, compared with 7% in 2009, according to the June 27 report.

The retail sector witnessed the highest delivery rates of all verticals featured in the index. Retail email delivery increased one percentage point to 98% delivered in 2010. Overall delivery rates across all industry sectors averaged 95% for 2010, an increase of two percentage points compared with the prior year.

The index offers three recommendations for email marketers: mailing lists should be kept clean by processing bounces and suppressing opt-outs immediately; messages should be targeted, relevant and at an expected frequency; and every email sent should be tested.

â€œSuppressing non-responders needs to be done,â€ said Liz Bross, VP of business development and digital interaction at Harte-Hanks. â€œIt will affect rates, unsubscribes, and the sender's reputation with Internet service providers. Whatever you do, suppress your non-responders.â€

She also emphasized building dynamic content for messaging.

â€œIt's hard to do because it takes resources, it takes time and it must be thought through,â€ she said. â€œIt's easy to say you don't have time but in the end it hurts your ROI if you don't." She said that subscribers will remain loyal as long as content remains relevant and expectations for frequency are met.

â€œThe results of the report are not really surprising,â€ Bross said. â€œWe stressed the importance of targeting content to our client base. What we were hoping to see and what we saw is that list hygiene is improving and deliverability is up. Because unsubscribe, bounce and deliverability are better, we think it's because marketers are paying attention to frequency and relevant content.â€

The index, which depicts a mostly positive-trending email industry landscape, was not without some negatives. Open rates averaged 17% for 2010, down from 26% in 2009, and 2010 click rates remained at 3%, compared with 2009.

â€œOpen rates and click rates are down, but it's mostly because of competition in the inbox,â€ said Bross. She added that â€œclick rates in the retail sector drove the numbers down because there's so much competition.â€

Insurance open rates performed particularly poorly, decreasing from 68% in 2009 to 25% in 2010. The steep drop-off occurred because â€œinitial email programs from insurance companies tended to be more customer-service orientedâ€ as opposed to more current â€œpromotional messaging with cross-sell and up-sell offers,â€ according to the report.

â€œInsurance email marketers used to stay in a safe world but they've moved into more promotional messaging,â€ explained Bross.

Direct marketing services company, Harte-Hanks, studied more than 2.8 billion emails sent by 99 clients on the Postfuture email messaging platform in order to complete the index. The nine verticals examined within the study are automotive, entertainment, financial, government, insurance, pharmaceutical, retail, technology and travel/hospitality.

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source: dmnews.com

GGMailMan · Jun 29, 2011

Good article, and as these 'averages' keep increasing, it will weed out the weak and the strong will survive. Darwinism at its finest. What is an acceptable engagement ratio today, will be viewed as 'poor' in a year or 2.

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Deliverability, unsubscriber rate improve - open rates slip

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