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Every time I speak to a group about email marketing, they’re inordinately interested in how to measure success. And inevitably, success is measured by how well (or how poorly) their open rates and CTRs stack up against “industry average”.
Industry average success metrics are irrelevant to the success (or failure) of your email marketing programs. After the first mailing, you can often ignore them save perhaps a bi-annual visit to your favourite metrics site for the sake of curiosity and benchmarking.
Why?
In reality, the statistics vary widely by industry sector, time of year, and reporting company, among other factors. For example, DoubleClick’s quarterly email trend reports consistently cite open rates in the 38% range, and clickthrough rates hovering around 8%. Competitor Bigfoot Interactive reports open rates as low as 28% but claims CTR’s that range from 4% to 22%!
Personally, I tend to lean towards DoubleClick’s results for most of our relationship marketing efforts. Their trends usually closely mirror what is actually happening with my own clients. Does that make Bigfoot Interactive wrong? No. You see their numbers are very close to the results our clients achieve with rented lists - weak open rates and clickthroughs all over the map.
And that’s exactly the point.
Industry averages are most useful at the very beginning, when you are estimating outcomes and trying to quantify expected results or developing a business case. As soon as you drop your first mailing, what the industry achieves is less important than what you are achieving.
Who cares if the industry average is 38% when your house list consistently receives an open rate of 65%. Does that mean it’s ok to watch your open rates drop over 50% before you take action?
Conversely, if your list is achieving an open rate of 17% with a deliverability ratio of 99%, your objective is awareness, your subject line clearly telegraphs your brand and the content of the email, are you necessarily failing?
The obvious answer both times is a resounding no. In fact, the average of those two numbers is suspiciously close to 38%!
What matters most is the pattern of response, and the factors that might contribute to those trends.
Industry averages won’t tell you which subject lines are “magic” to your customers, which offers they respond to or which content is most interesting. Nor will the results of a single mailing.
But a careful analysis of trends within your program will. And much more, if only you care to look…
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