Email Open Rates Steady, Click-Through Rates Decline
By Anna Johnson on January 24th, 2009Epsilon’s U.S. based Q3 2008 Email Trends and Benchmarks Results report reveals that email open rates hovered between 19 and 21 percent in the last quarter of 2008, while the average click-through rate was 5.9 percent, and the average deliverability rate was 93.6 percent.
Epsilon compiled the results from 6.2 billion emails sent between July and September 2008, across multiple industries and more than 200 clients.
The following graph depicts the trends in open rates, click-through rates and deliverability rates each quarter since Q3 2006.
Epsilon Q3 2008 Email Trends and Benchmarks Results:
As you can see, the results in the last quarter were consistent with those throughout 2008… but, overall, there is a continued downward trend in open rates and click-through rates since 2006.
Open rates, click-through rates and deliverability rates also varied from industry to industry. Here are just four segments I pulled from the Epsilon’s report:
Business Products and Services General
- Deliverability: 91.3 percent
- Open rate: 19.4 percent
- Click through rate: 4.7 percent
Business Publishing/Media General
- Deliverability: 94.3 percent
- Open rate: 15.8 percent
- Click through rate: 5.6 percent
Consumer Products General
- Deliverability: 93.4 percent
- Open rate: 19.3 percent
- Click through rate: 6.4 percent
Consumer Services General
- Deliverability: 93.6 percent
- Open rate: 23.2 percent
- Click through rate: 4.6 percent
As you can imagine, the average rates identified by Epsilon are based on all kinds of emails sent by all kinds of companies for all kinds of purposes.
We’re not just talking email offers, but newsletters and other kinds of customer communications. They’re also based on sending emails to lists derived from all kinds of sources.
Keep these factors in mind when comparing your own metrics to these averages.
Source: Epsilon, “Epsilon Q3 2008 Email Trends and Benchmark,” Epsilon, January 20, 2009
