Social media is great for the fast hit, but email is still the option of choice when it comes to delivering a customized marketing message.
A new study by Harte-Hanks shows that overall delivery rates are at 95% for 2010, slightly up from 2009 and unsubscribes are down to .19%.
When it comes to the all important open and click, it varies by industry. Overall, open rates dropped to 17% from 26%, but Harte-Hanks says this might not be an accurate depiction of the facts. They say that many emails only report as “open” once the images have been downloaded, but many people will skip the images, rather than deal with the potential for a virus or simply because it’s an unnecessary step.
Click rates averaged 3%, which was in line with 2009. When you break it down by industry, you can see that our health and welfare is of utmost importance. Both insurance and pharmaceutical have the highest click rates, while technology barely shows up as a blip on the graph. My guess would be that tech buyers are too tech savvy to go with a boring email click. It’s likely they’re following through online or through a mobile app. Harte-Hanks surmises the problem is a reliance on trade show mailing lists which doesn’t demonstrate a specific interest in a company.
The keys to email success? Highly-targeted, customized emails, sent to properly vetted customers on a regular, but not too frequent basis. Couldn’t be simpler, right?
“Source: Harte-Hanks Postfuture Index™ Email Response Metrics 2009-2010, 2011.”
