Q1 2011 North America Email Trend Results: Open Rates Increase from Previous Quarter and Q1 2010

June 2, 2011 — The Direct Marketing Association’s (DMA) Email Experience Council and Epsilon today released the Q1 2011 North America Email Trends and Benchmarks Results, which show a 4.2 percent increase in open rates over Q1 2010 and a 39.2 percent increase in average volume per client from Q1 2010.

The quarterly analysis is compiled from 7.1 billion emails sent by Epsilon in January, February, and March 2011, across multiple industries and approximately 140 participating clients. The analysis combines data from both of Epsilon’s proprietary platforms, DREAM and DREAMmail.

Report Highlights:

Open rates (23.3 percent) increased both quarter-over-quarter (by 5.6 percent) and year-over-year (by 4.2 percent). Five of the thirteen reported industries saw at least a 5 percent increase in open rates over Q1 2010.
The average click rate is 5.9 percent — a slight decrease from the same time last year (6.0 percent).
Coming out of the holiday season, the average volume per client increased only slightly by 5.7 percent from Q4 2010, yet saw a significant increase of 39.2 percent over the same quarter last year.
Click to conversion rates decreased 4.7 percent over last quarter, but increased 26.5 percent over the same quarter last year. The 3.0 percent conversion rate is the strongest over a two-year period, confirming that email continues to be a strong channel for revenue.
Not surprisingly, messages categorized as Service messages had the highest open rates (37.5 percent) and click rates (7.9 percent).

"Email volumes continue to increase with a jump of nearly 40 percent from the same time last year. Despite the increase in messages, email marketing remains a critical and effective communications tool that drives revenue, consumer engagement, and brand loyalty,” according to Judy Loschen, vice president of digital analytics at Epsilon. “As email marketing matures, we recommend that marketers integrate the channel closely with other marketing channels, such as social media and online, to create the most relevant customer experience, and to engage with individuals on a one-to-one basis how, where, and when they want to receive communications.”

“The increased volume didn’t come at the expense of open rates,” said Yoram Wurmser, DMA’s director of marketing & media insights. “For a mature channel, that’s impressive, and indicates that email continues to have potential for continued strong growth.”

For more information and industry-specific benchmarks, the Q1 2011 Email Trends and Benchmark report is available at www.epsilon.com/pr/Q111emailbenchmarks.

About Epsilon

Epsilon is the industry’s leading marketing services firm, with a broad array of data-driven, multichannel marketing solutions that leverage consumer insight to help brands deepen their relationships with customers. Services include strategic consulting, acquisition and customer database technologies, loyalty management, proprietary data, predictive modeling, and a full range of direct and digital agency services, including creative, interactive Web design, email deployment, search engine optimization, and direct mail production. In addition, Epsilon is the world's largest permission-based email marketer. Epsilon is an Alliance Data company. For more information, visit www.epsilon.com or call 1.800.309.0505.

About the Email Experience Council

The Direct Marketing Association’s Email Experience Council is a global professional organization that strives to enhance the image of email marketing and communications, while celebrating and actively advocating its critical importance in business and its ROI value.

We are committed to regularly conducting a broad series of initiatives for a variety of organizations that highlight the positive impact and importance of email as a marketing tool, communications vehicle and branding device. Additionally, eec members are setting the standards for email through our Member Roundtables. The members who belong to our organization are representatives of other trade organizations, agencies, advertisers, technology partners, clients and companies focused on the potential of email marketing via mobile and other digital devices. We encourage you to become part of the eec at http://emailexperience.org/member-center/why-join-eec.

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