February 16 , 2010

Epsilon NA announces email trend reports
Open, click rates increase from 08

Epsilon has released its Q4 2009 North America Email Trends and Benchmarks Results which show an increase from Q4 2008 in both open and click rates.

The quarterly analysis is compiled from over 7 billion emails sent by Epsilon in October, November and December 2009, across multiple industries and approximately 170 participating clients. The analysis combines data from both of Epsilon’s proprietary platforms, DREAM and DREAMmail.

Report Highlights:

• Open rates remain strong at 22.0%, increasing 5.3% from Q4 2008. Nine of the thirteen industries had an increase in open rates over Q4 2008.

• The average click rate is 5.9%, up slightly from this same time last year (5.8%).

• During the high-volume holiday season, the average volume per client increased 25.8% from last quarter and was up 9.8% from last year.

• Epsilon’s client base had 94.1% inbox deliverability for Q4, higher than Return Path’s average reported deliverability of 84.0% across a sample of US and Canada commercial email.

• Two of the thirteen industries tracked, Consumer Products CPG and Consumer Services Telecom, saw an increase in all three metrics – opens, clicks and non-bounce rate – compared to last year. 

According to Kevin Mabley, Senior Vice President of Strategic & Analytic Consulting at Epsilon, "Email has matured over the last decade to become a critical tool in the multichannel marketing mix. 2009 closed out strong with holiday mailings from retailers beating numbers from 2008. The benefits vary by industry but our research consistently shows that marketers who use triggers to drive timely campaigns, segmentation to identify and target key audiences, and dynamic content to deliver relevant content are having the greatest success. Pharma in particular has been adopting best practices in list growth and hygiene. Both Pharma and Consumer Packaged Goods companies have increased email sophistication, as these sectors shift towards targeted, direct-response oriented campaigns. Over the next year, we expect to see a growing trend towards more service or transactional-oriented messaging to deliver real-time communications over email.”

A study from Return Path, a leader in email reputation services, showed that 84% of permission-based emails sent in the US and Canada during Q4 2009 reached inboxes. Epsilon’s client base had significantly higher deliverability than the industry benchmark with 94% in Q4 2009.