E-Mail Open Rates

This subject line, “Study: E-mail open and click-through rates up in Q4” from BtoB Magazine has us wondering, is this irrational exuberance? They seem to be ecstatic about open rates of emails being up in the fourth-quarter of last year to 22%, up from 20.9% in the fourth quarter of 2008. The study also found click-through rates were up marginally, from 5.8% to 5.9%.

Can we step back and think about this? This means that 78% of the people on your treasured, valued, opt in list do not even open your message. So that means that 94.1% of those same loved customers or prospects are not going to your landing page, they are not engaging with you, they are not seeing your appealing message. For some reason we hear many people wanting to compare these metrics with response rates for direct mail. What is a positive response for mail? A sale! That would be revenue generated as a result of your customer or prospect receiving information from you.

E-Mail has its place as a part of a larger strategy, but if it is your only method for reaching new customers or reactivating dormant customers, you may miss your potential.

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