eMarketer.com just posted that “fewer consumers worldwide are opening marketing e-mails, according to a November 2008 study by MailerMailer.” (eMarketer) MailerMailer is an affordable ESP for smaller list management needs if you’re interested. This matter to me considering I send 100,000+ e-mails monthly! Based on research, they found that in the first half of 2008, the average marketing e-mail open rate fell to 13.20% and Click rates fell to 2.73%. Some industries had higher open rates for their marketing e-mail (ie: finance, religious/spiritual, gov and telecom).

Also, another factor that could contribute to the drop in Open Rates and Click Through Rates (CTR) is the Subject Header. For anyone new to e-mail marketing, eMarketer conducted earlier studies that showed, shorter subject lines performed better than longer ones:

• Subject Lines < 35 Characters – Open Rates: 19.6% ; CTR: 3.1%
• Subject Lines > 35 Characters – Open Rates: 14.8%; CTR: 1.9%

But don’t start thinking “e-mail is a waste of time”…that’s simply crazy talk! E-mail is 2nd to paid search when it came to driving high volume. (You should already know that!) What I didn’t know was that an average of 4 out of 10 SEM companies said “e-mail marketing yielded the best ROI of any tactic worldwide” (Survey results from January 2008 from Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO)).

If you are looking to do e-mail marketing, I’ll be writing an article next week about “The Best Email Service Provider’s For Small Businesses”, with Q&A, Price Quotes and more.

Posted under E-Mail