Overall email volume increased 5% in Q4 2012 compared to the same period the previous year, according to a recent Experian Marketing Services benchmark report. In addition, the Experian study found that unique open rates increased 12% year over year in Q4 2012.
Additional key findings from the report include:
- The revenue per email increased 8% in Q4 2012 compared to the same time last year, an increase from 13 cents to 14 cents per email year over year;
- The email volume among different industries shows that travel emails reported the largest increase with 21.4%; and
- The revenue per email in Q4 2012 was 30% higher than in Q3 2012, an increase from 11 cents per email to 14 cents.
{loadposition SPIAA} “Overall email volume increased in Q4 and unique open rates increased for the third straight quarter, as more than 56% of brands had statistically significant increases in transaction rates for Q4 2012, with multichannel retailers seeing the largest increase along with consumer products,” said Peter DeNunzio, GM of Experian Marketing Services CheetahMail. “One trend for email marketers to watch is the speed of response time among their customers, especially when it comes to email viewed via mobile devices. Marketers operate in a time and place where it’s more important than ever to continually optimize their marketing campaigns with some sort of testing procedures, especially given the amount of data available today.”
According to Experian Marketing Services data, Saturdays and Sundays had higher open, click and transaction rates but much lower volume. Revenue per email was higher on Monday, while Friday had the best click rate.
Volume also plays a role in time of day, noted the report, as 8 p.m. to midnight and midnight to 4 a.m. had higher responses than the more popular 4 a.m. to noon time period.
