Small Business Email Marketers Plagued By Low Open Rates, Click-Through Rates
By Anna Johnson on February 17th, 2010Implix which provides the GetResponse email services solution to small businesses worldwide, has found that small business email marketers are confronting high levels of email fatigue and low engagement among their subscribers, especially in North America.
Based on its study of 1.6 billion emails sent across 95 countries and six continents via the GetResponse email marketing platform, Implix found the following:
- The average email open rate among North American email marketers was 10.76 percent. Among European email marketers it was just over 13 percent, while email marketers in the Australian and Oceanic region averaged an 8.08 percent open rate.
- The average email click-through rate (based on emails opened) among North American email marketers was below 3 percent, while European email marketers achieved an impressive 40 percent CTR based on emails opened.
- North American email marketers also had the highest average bounce rate (2.17 percent) and the second highest complaint rate (0.12 percent). Email marketers in south America had the lowest bounce rate of 0.13 percent.
Implix’s findings contrast with the much higher email open rates and click-through rates found by Silverpop, which studied the email open rates, email click-through rates and other metrics of its largely corporate client base (see LINKS).
Could it be that corporate email marketing departments know a thing or two that small business email marketers – including many self-described ‘Internet marketers’ – don’t? Are small businesses sending out less relevant/valuable emails, building lower quality lists, failing to clean their lists, or engaging in other sub-optimal email marketing practises?
Are the differences due to the types of subscribers that corporates versus small businesses tend to attract?
Or can the results also be explained by the types of email marketers that tend to use GetResponse, including the fact that some of these lists may be derived from Implix’s GetSubscribers co-registration solution (since co-registration tends to yield substantially lower quality, less responsive email subscribers)?
What does seem clear is that, when we look at the differences between email marketers based on their continent of origin, North American email marketers seem to be lagging behind their European counterparts in terms of opens and clicks.
Said Simon Grabowski, CEO of Implix:
“Our study shows how serious the problems of email fatigue and low engagement have become in North America. Fewer than one out of every three recipients opened and clicked on a link. And only one out of every eight subscribers who clicked on links did it twice.”
“We need to remember that top ISPs have begun to introduce engagement metrics such as opens and clicks into their deliverability equations. That means that ‘unengaged’ recipients can cause email campaigns to be blocked and automatically sent to spam folders. North American marketers have a lot of work to do in engaging their subscribers.”
The “GetResponse Email Marketing Metrics Around the World” report is available at the GetResponse Learning Center.
