e-mail marketing performing well despite spam abuse

June 4, 2004

Source: eMarketer

Recent findings by DoubleClick point to e-mail marketing performing fairly steadily into the first quarter of 2004, with click-through and open rates declining slightly, but delivery rates up 1.5% from one year ago. Click-through rates (CTR) generally stayed about the same or declined over the year, except for financial services e-mails.

That sector recorded a CTR of 11.8%, compared to 7.8% in Q1 2003. Financial services also recorded the highest CTR, with consumer publishers and consumer services a couple of percentage points behind. Consumer products CTR declined the most, dropping from 14% to 8.5%. Overall, CTRs were down by 5.6%, sitting at 8.4% for Q1 2004, compared to 8.9% one year earlier.

Revenue per e-mail was only down slightly, from $0.26 to $0.23 quarter-to-quarter, and down $0.05 since one year ago. That figure is within the general range of recent quarters, though close to the two-year low of $0.21 in Q3 2002.

DoubleClick also determined that delivery rates, the number of e-mails sent minus those that bounced back, rose from 87.5% one year ago to reach 88.8%, an increase of 1.5%.

Despite small upticks and downticks, the figures for CTRs and revenue per e-mail, as well as other metrics such as open rates and orders per e-mail delivered, demonstrate the steady performance of the industry. Though the threat of spam has increased the usage of e-mail filtering systems and continues to be the subject of bad press, e-mail marketing remains a viable business tool.

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