Do Your Stats Stack?
Great tables in Epsilon’s Email Trends and Benchmarks study released this July. Great for benchmarking.
Open Rate Comparison By Industry Business Products and Services General
| Q1 09 | Q1 08 | |
| Business Products & Services (General) | 29.1% | 22.9% |
| Business Publishing/Media (General) | 17.8% | 16.2% |
| Consumer Products | ||
| Packaged Goods | 17.1% | 16.4% |
| General Products | 23.8% | 20.8% |
| Pharmaceutical | 26.6% | 16.9% |
| Publishing/Media General | 16.7% | 15.9% |
| Services General | 20.0% | 24.7% |
| Services Telecom | 22.9% | 22.5% |
| Financial Services | ||
| CC/Banks | 27.4% | 28.9% |
| General Services | 31.4% | 25.6% |
| Non-Profit/Education General | 24.3% | 23.1% |
| Retail | ||
| Apparel | 14.3% | 12.8% |
| Electronics |
17.6% | 24.4% |
| General | 22.9% | 16.3% |
| Specialty | 19.1% | 17.3% |
| Travel/Hospitality Travel Services | 23.3% | 24.2% |
Epsilon’s Conclusion: “Consumers are taking a variety of offline actions as a result of permission-based email communications...sophisticated marketers are incorporating triggers, transactions, preferences, segmentation and other advanced analytics to produce more successful campaigns.” (Emphasis mine)
My comments:
- These stats relate to permission-based email communications, which include newsletters. No studies available on newsletters by themselves
- Newsletter publishers need to learn how to incorporate triggers, preferences and segmentation.
- For example, an accounting practice might begin offering a newsletter focused on the tax-planning needs of smaller segments of its client base. Retailers, contractors, biotech, import/export businesses have different concerns and will be grateful for focused communications — otherwise, they’re likely to tune out. Publishers of e-newsletters can accomplish this by simply allowing people to opt-in to a different/additional publication in the sidebar of the publication they currently receive
- Service providers don’t dismiss the idea of using a “trigger” to entice your clients to download a white paper or special report. It’s a competitive world out there and you need to continue providing value between service engagements
Please share best practices here. I’m especially interested in what service providers are doing well with email initiatives.
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Q1 2009 |
Q1 2008 |
