E-mail Marketing: Restaurants Enjoy Best Click-Through Rates at 57.5%
Of
the 13 industry categories, restaurants enjoyed the best open rates
(167.7%, open rates exceeding 100% occur by way of pass-alongs, and
reopened e-mail), as well as the best click-through rates (57.5%),
according to Harte-Hanks
Postfuture Index™ for January-June 2006. The index provides
comparative e-mail metrics in aggregate, including 4,300 business and
consumer e-mail campaigns.
Among all sectors for all purposes of e-mail combined,
- the average delivered rate stands at 91.2%
- average open rate of 78.8% of those e-mail delivered
- click-through rate of 18.4% of all e-mail delivered
- and an opt-out rate of 0.4% of all e-mail delivered
Retail had the lowest open rate (35.3%), while the automotive sector had the lowest click-through rate (5.7%). All reported averages are unweighted.
Behavioral targeting of messaging can raise
metrics significantly. One large retailer achieved a 74.2% open rate,
24.1% click-through rate and 0.1% opt-out rate, just by synchronizing
e-mail with in-store activity, according to Harte-Hanks. Using
transactional e-mail to make dynamic product recommendations produce, on
average, a 148.8% open rate and a 20.4% click-through rate.
The 13 industries mentioned in the study (in order of descending
click-through rates) are:
- restaurants (57.5%),
- publishing (55.6%),
- pharmaceutical (23.8%),
- travel and hospitality (23.4%),
- conference events (14.2%),
- financial services (11.0%),
- technology (10.9%),
- government (9.5%),
- insurance (9.5%),
- consumer packaged goods (8.6%),
- entertainment (8.1%),
- retail (6.0%),
- automotive (5.7%).
Looking at differences between business and consumer markets, e-mail sent to consumers received the higher click-through rates of 19.9% and open rates of 78.9%, while business-to-business e-mail had rates of 11.2% and 67.7%, respectively.
