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New Research with Benchmarks for E-Marketers
IMN recently released a new study of their customers’ newsletter mailings that provides insights and benchmarks for e-Marketers in a variety of ways, including editorial planning and response rate projection.
The October 2003 study presents data on readers’ content preferences and readership patterns that is based on over 100 million e-mailed newsletters that were sent to approximately eight million active subscribers. The research supports IMN’s strategy of Informative Marketing,™ which uses continuous feedback about readership behavior to strengthen the interest of individual subscribers from one e-mail to the next.
This research calls attention to the inherent advantages that e-Marketers enjoy because of today’s technological advances. Marketers have instant access to behavioral data on every e-mail recipient so they now know what their subscribers are reading first, what kind of content they read, where they spend the longest time on a page, what they click to next, and which articles they pass along. The more marketers rely on this type of information and the statistics found in this study, the smarter they become – and the better chance they have of sending information that customers want, value, expect and continue to open and read.
Some of the key findings of this IMN study, which was based on the mailings by nearly 4,000 clients over three years, are:
- Open rates vary industry to industry. When comparing industry to industry, this study found that several industries surpass the average unique open rate* of 39.4 percent. The top industries in this category, listed below, have the most success in engaging their subscribers.
- 63.2 percent - Marketing communications firms (advertising, marketing, public relations, etc.)
- 55 percent - Retailers
- 47.6 percent - Financial services
- 43.4 percent - Manufacturing
- 41.1 percent - Nonprofit organizations
- 40.9 percent - Software development firms
- Readers highly value product information. The IMN study shows that, on average, active e-newsletter subscribers read 64 percent of the content in each issue. Subscribers seem to actively seek out product-oriented content most often, emphasizing the point that customers and prospects truly value information on products and services. Here are the “unique click-through*” rates that show what readers’ preferences are when seeking information from a newsletter:
- 29 percent product information
- 18 percent company news
- 14 percent industry news
- 11 percent tips and tricks and other topics
- Your readers are getting your e-mail. Another interesting point of this study was the high average number of subscribers that receive their e-mails. Over 97 percent receive their e-mails, with only 0.3 percent bouncing due to full mailboxes and 2.3 percent due to incorrect addresses.
This study highlights the fact that by continually engaging readers with Informative Marketing strategies, marketers can develop e-newsletters that subscribers not only open, but look forward receiving. This improves branding, retention and customers’ likelihood to purchase.
*Note: A unique open rate refers to the percentage of subscribers who click the subject line of an e-mail to open and read it. If an individual opens the e-mail multiple times, only his/her initial click to open is counted. A unique click-through rate refers to the percentage of subscribers who not only open and start to read their e-mail, but then click an inside link for additional information. If an individual clicks multiple inside links, only his/her initial click-through is counted.
[PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION]
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