Thanks to the annual e-mail marketing benchmarking study by Silverpop, we got some great takeaways on open rates, click-through rates, and list churn.
Let’s keep it simple and quickly touch on the top 5 takeaways as it relates to open rates.
- APAC outperformed the rest for unique open rates.
That’s an interesting statistic but doesn’t mean much to you, but the below tips should:
Things to remember about open rate metrics:
- They work best as an internal benchmark
- Use open rates to track engagement over time, not necessarily per campaign
- Long term open rate tracking can signal problems with engagement
- It’s not a foolproof metric, it does not take into account image blocking and other hurdles to open
- Use open rates as a way to measure against your other messages, to learn what works best for your company
- Lodging, Travel Agencies & Services, Insurance, Consumer Products, Nonprofits, Associations & Government, and Schools & Education had unique open rates that exceeded 50 percent.
This doesn’t mean that you’re bound to suffer weak open rates if you’re not included in the top 5 industries. These stats are influenced by frequency and also necessity. Industries in the top 5 likely send far less frequent e-mails than say, Retail and E-commerce, and industry that is known to send e-mails daily.
Want to join the ranks of 50% or higher open rates, don’t forget these key takeaways about subject lines:
- Good subject lines have a call to action before the reader even opens the e-mail
- They have alluring and enticing words like, free, you, now, and instantly
- Are under 40 characters to be mobile optimized
- Transactional e-mails have more than double the success of non-transactional e-mails.
This has direct implications for you. Be sure that transactional e-mails dominate your e-mail strategy. In other words, craft e-mail campaigns based on the the actions taken by your users or potential users. Whatever you chose to call them ‘triggered,” “automatic,” “personalized” or even “real-time,” e-mails should be sent based on actions and interactions people have with your product, content or advertising.
- APAC wins again with the most opens per opener.
Silverpop points out that these stats are lower when compared to previous years. They speculate this is because mobile consumers are quicker to delete emails that don’t resonate immediately. This highlights the importance of ensuring your e-mails are responsive and mobile-friendly, and that it might be a good idea to limit calls to action to one or two per email.
- Insurance and Corporate Services were significantly higher than the other industries for both mean and top quartile.
What does this mean for you? Include relevant content in your e-mails that people are likely to save for reference. Some examples might be best practices, infographics and case studies.