Q2 2011 North America Email Trend Results: Key Metrics Remain Strong and Average Volume; Per Client Continues to Increase

New York, NY, August 30 — The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and Epsilon today released the Q2 2011 North America Email Trends and Benchmarks Results, which show a 16.2 percent increase in average volume-per-client from Q1 2011, and a 14.3 percent decrease in average volume-per-client from Q2 2010. Open rates increased by 0.4 percent from Q2 2010 and click rates were directly in line with the same time last year.

The quarterly analysis is compiled from 7.7 billion emails sent by Epsilon in April, May and June 2011, across multiple industries and approximately 130 participating clients. The analysis combines data from both of Epsilon’s proprietary platforms, DREAM and DREAMmail.

Report Highlights:

Open rates (22.2 percent) saw a slight decrease quarter over quarter (4.8 percent). However, they increased over the same quarter last year (by 0.4 percent).

Click rates (5.2 percent) decreased slightly (by 0.7 percent) from last quarter. Click rates are directly in line with the same time last year and remain established over the last two years.

Average volume-per-client increased by 16.2 percent from Q1 2011, but shows a decrease over last year of 14.3 percent (Q2 2010).

Unique click to conversion rates increased 14.6 percent over Q1 2011 and 6.2 percent over Q2 2010.

The non-bounce rate remained fairly stable, decreasing 0.3 percent.

"While email volumes are down compared to the same period last year, they grew over the previous quarter and we anticipate high volumes as we head into the holiday season. This represents an ongoing challenge for email marketers, across all industries. There is great competition happening in consumer inboxes as marketers vie for attention,” stated Judy Loschen, vice president of digital analytics at Epsilon. “Email is an engagement tool, and to leverage the channel to its full potential, marketers should take advantage of rich data and incorporate online and offline consumer insight to better target and personalize messages. They should also focus on integrating other channels and being strategic about the ways in which they utilize each channel.

“For email marketers, this quarterly report is a great way to measure their own campaigns against industry averages,” says Ali Swerdlow, director of the Email Experience Council. “The rising volume of email this quarter is a good reminder to fine tune email practices to get the best results in a challenging economy.”

For more information and industry-specific benchmarks, the Q2 2011 Email Trends and Benchmark report is available at www.epsilon.com/pr/Q211emailbenchmarks.

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.

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.

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