Email in Q4 2012: Open Rates Up, Click Rates Fall
March 18, 2013 -- The average email open rate increased to 27.4% in Q4 of 2012, representing the highest rate in 2 years and a 10.5% gain from Q4 2011′s 24.8%, finds direct-to-consumer solutions provider Epsilon’s Q4 2012 Email Trends and Benchmarks.
In addition to increased email open rates, other Business As Usual (BAU) trends:
- Click through rates were unchanged from Q3 2012, remaining at 4.5%. Still, they reflect the second to lowest click rates of the last 2 years.
- Non-Bounce rate remained strong at 96%.
Triggered Email Trends
Triggered emails (emails sent to consumers as a result of an action, such as abandoning an online shopping cart) continued to outperform “business as usual” (BAU) emails.
- Open rates for triggered emails averaged 46.7% -- 70.5% higher than the BAU rate.
- Click through rates on triggered emails dropped for the 5th consecutive quarter, to 9%. With this said, the average click rates for triggered emails were more than double the rate for BAU emails.
- Triggered email non-bounce rates were 95.6%, slightly below BAU emails’ rate of 96%.
- Triggered email volume accounted for 5% of total volume in Q4 2012, up 73% year-over-year.
- The highest triggered email open rates were in Financial Services CC/Banks (64.8%) and Retail-General (64.2%).
- The highest triggered email-click through rates were in Consumer Products (18.5%) and Retail Apparel (14.7%).
Click-to-Open Rates
- Examining 11 industry segments, click-to-open-rates fell by more than 5% Y-O-Y in all but 2 segments (financial services general and retail specialty).
- Consumer products (CPG) emails have the highest click-to-open-rates at 39.5%. Financial Services-Credit Cards/Banks had the lowest click-to-open-rates at 11.6%.
Two In 3 New Subscribers Inactive
- The report finds approximately of an average email list was active in Q4 (meaning the subscriber either opened or clicked on emails in the past 12 months).
- New subscribers comprise 10.3% of the average list. Of new subscribers, 63.4% were inactive (down from 66% in Q3).
About: Epsilon’s Q4 2012 Email Trends and Benchmarks analysis is compiled from 6.4 billion emails sent by Epsilon in October, November and December 2012 across multiple industries and approximately 170 participating clients.
Source: Marketing Charts, Email in Q4 2012: Open Rates Up Y-O-Y, but Click Rates Fall, March 18, 2013.
