According to a November 2008 study by MailerMailer, fewer consumers are opening email. The average marketing email open rate continued its falling trend dropping to 13.20% in the first half of 2008, compared with 16.11% in the first half of 2007. Click rates also fell, from 3.18% in the first half of 2007 to 2.73% in the first half of this year.
The study also reaffirmed previous data indicating that shorter subject lines outperform longer ones. Subject lines of 35 characters or less yielded an average open rate of 19.6% and a 3.1% average click-through rate while subject lines of 35 or more characters yielded average open rates of 14.8% and average click-through rates of 1.9%.
Other notable highlights include:
- One-third of opens occur within the first two hours. The report cites an open rate of 32.26% occuring within the first two hours compared to 29.57% six months ago and 29.40% a year ago.
- Sundays and Monday remain the best days to send email.
- Higher average open rates on emails with personalization in both the subject line and copy while emails with only the subject line personalized received the lowest average open rate.
- Average click rates increase for emails containing a higher number of links. Emails with 1-5 links received an average click rate of 1.72% while emails with 20+ links received a 3.51% average click rate.
The full email marketing metrics report can be found here.
Useful Links:
eMarketer reports Consumers Opening Fewer Emails
BeRelevant! Highlights from MailerMailer’s Email Marketing Report
[...] came across a recent study done by MailerMailer and someone’s blog post about it. The study talked about how Consumers open less email but ROI is higher. One part of the study was [...]