The average email subscriber gets 416 commercial messages per month, says Return Path, and that number may just get higher. The latest quarterly email benchmark study [download page] from Experian Marketing Services indicates that email volume grew by 17.9% year-over-year in Q2. That follows an 11.6% increase in Q1, a relatively modest 5.4% bump in Q4, and no change in Q3 2012. Open rates don’t seem to have suffered, though, with total and unique open rates up year-over-year during Q2.
Aside from open rates, though, the study’s email performance analysis reveals mixed results:
- Total (3.8% to 3.2%) and unique (2.5% and 2.3%) click rates fell from Q2 2012 to Q2 2013, although only half of the brands reported a significant decrease;
- Click-to-open rate fell from 15.4% to 13.7%;
- Transaction rates slipped from 0.1% to 0.08%, even as 48% of the brands had significant increases in this area;
- Revenue per email increased by a cent to $0.12); and
- Average order value, bounce rates, and unsubscribe rates all improved by healthy margins.
Among the 7 industries examined, 5 increased their email volume in Q2 on a year-over-year basis, with catalogers posting the biggest jump, of 31.7%. On a quarter-over-quarter basis, consumer products and services brands registered the greatest increase in email volume, of 12%. The overall quarter-over-quarter rise was 7%.
