Bronto Blog

Below we have included select email marketing trends and statistics for your review. From online retail driven data to the percentages tied to testing, opt-in and more, we have compiled statistical information that we hope you will find valuable. We will update this page continuously as new metrics are released.

Email Marketing in Retail Space
Metrics to Track
Testing
Landing Pages
Segmentation
Multi-Channel Marketing
Welcome Emails
Email Subscription Process
The From Line

Email Marketing in the Retail Space

• Email marketing remains a top marketing priority for retailers in 2008.
• Email marketing is widely used among online retailers (92%) to market to their own customers. Over 93% of these retailers plan on making it a higher priority in the upcoming year
• The typical retailer in the survey expects to spend $311,634 this year sending emails to its own list of customers.
• Emailing to house lists is considered very cost-effective, costing on average $6.85 per order, the lowest cost-per-order among 10 marketing tactics covered in the report. (The average order value from those e-mails is $120.27.)
• The average delivery rate on e-mails to house lists is 90%, the open rate is 22% and the annual opt-out rate 6%, according to the report.
• 95% of retailers send e-mails when a product is shipped, 94% to confirm a purchase, 82% in response to a customer action, 81% when new products are available and 65% to promote online-only deals.
• Only 42% of retailers send customized e-mails based on customer behavior or purchase data, but 73% rate that a very effective tactic.
• 58% send segmented e-mails to groups of customers based on stated preferences or purchase data, a tactic rated very effective by 67% of those merchants.Shop.org State of Retailing Online 2008.

Source: The State of Retailing Online 2008, Shop.org

Metrics Email Marketers Should be Tracking

Click to Open Ratio – Provides a measure of relevance by removing the unopened emails from the equation.
Click times conversion – Takes open rates out of the calculation of success and looks at how the campaign performed with recipients who clicked.
Revenue per email – compares the value of different messages, offers, subject lines, etc. by comparing the revenue attached to the specific campaigns.
Order size per email – effective for comparing campaign messaging. Categories based on order size may also be good for segmentation.
Leads per email – allows for easy comparison of offers and lists.
Engagement per campaign – Looks at non-financial impact by measuring engagement activities, such as registering, entering a contest, commenting to a list, amending a profile.

Source: Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007, Marketing Sherpa

Revenue per campaign is the most-utilized metric, used by 39.8%, for success of email marketing. File size is a close second with 38.3%, and revenue per email third, at 25.8%. In fact, 35% do not set clear success metrics for their efforts. However, for those who do measure, among the most utilized strategies, email earns the highest ROI of 40%, followed by search (28%) and direct mail (18%).

Source: An Email Marketing Benchmark Survey: Analysis and Recommendations, Marketing Profs

Testing

50-70% of marketers manipulate various response elements in every campaign. Primarily, marketers focus on the offer, the call to action, and the subject line. While 84% adjust promotions and content, there is a 30% drop off for custom content or even personalization. Good news: 72% test Subject Lines every time! Between 5% and 40% do not adjust at all the various elements available to them to improve the response.

Source: An Email Marketing Benchmark Survey: Analysis and Recommendations, Marketing Profs

Landing Pages

68% say they use landing pages to boost response, and 64% of those who optimize use a dedicated landing page; however, nearly 40% of those still just use an existing Web site page (usually a product page).

An Email Marketing Benchmark Survey: Analysis and Recommendations, Marketing Profs

Segmentation

Half (50%) of marketers say they segment their email file to boost response. Of course, that means half do not take advantage of this powerful technique.

Those who do segment, use it consistently, reporting that segments based on purchase/response drive the highest success. Demographic targeting is used heavily, by 70%, with mixed results, and overall recency and frequency drive milder success.

Source: An Email Marketing Benchmark Survey: Analysis and Recommendations, Marketing Profs

Multi-Channel Marketing

Only 35% of survey respondents use email as part of a multichannel effort, and 60% of those consider the impact of multiple-channels with every campaign. The most common multichannel efforts were combinations of direct (snail) mail and offline events combined with email, and online advertising used to boost response of email campaigns. Perhaps not surprising, marketers report that sweepstakes have limited success and are rarely used.

Source: An Email Marketing Benchmark Survey: Analysis and Recommendations, Marketing Profs

Welcome Emails

On the content front, 28% of retailers offer more than one content selection, with it ranging from two all the way up to the 50 content options offered by Amazon.com. Nearly 6% of retailers offer a local store update.

When it comes to transparency on frequency, however, retailers do a poor job. Not even 7% of retailers give subscribers any kind of idea how many emails to expect. And only one retailer, Coldwater Creek, allows subscribers to opt to receive a monthly only email.

Format-wise, nearly 12% of retailers offer plain-text versions of their newsletters during the sign-up process. Because of the superior responses from HTML emails, retailers may be hesitant to give subscribers this option.

In 2006, only 66% of major online retailers sent welcome emails. With 72% sending welcome emails this year, it appears that more retailers are recognizing the value of these critical emails.

In 2007, 98% of retailers’ welcome email now containing a link to their shopping site (up from 88% last year), 33% containing store locators (up from 31%) and 14% containing links to catalog information (up from 6%).

This year 58% of welcome emails were CAN-SPAM compliant in terms of including both a mailing address and unsubscribe method, versus 52% last year.

• 32% of welcome emails include a discount, reward or incentive, down from 34% last year. That’s in line with the results of our subscription study, which saw a move away from incentives during sign-up.
• 62% of welcome emails asked the subscriber to whitelist them by adding an email address to their address book, up from 49% last year.
• 79% of retailers sent out HTML welcome emails, up from 69% last. The remainder sent text-only welcome emails. That said, most of the HTML
• 53% of welcome emails included links to the retailer’s privacy policy, up from 45% last year.
• 75% of the welcome emails include the retailer’s brand name in their subject lines, on par with last year. Including branding here helps the subscriber recognize the email as one that they requested.

Source: Retail Welcome Email Benchmark Study, DMA, Email Experience Council

Email Subscription Process

• Only 92% of retailers have an email sign-up form or link on their homepage.
• More than 43% of retailers allow customers to sign up for email with one click from their homepage.
• The subscriber’s name (31%) and zip code (18%) were the two most often required pieces of information.

Source: 2007 Retail Email Subscription Benchmark Study , DMA, Email Experience Council

• 73% of retailers sent no more emails after receiving an opt-out request.
• 16% of retailers gave those trying to opt-out an opportunity to reduce the frequency at which they receive emails.
• 17% of retailers solicited feedback from those that had opted out
• 4% of retailers were in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 by either failing to honor opt-outs or taking longer than 10 business days to do so

A number of retailers tried to address these motivations and retain these subscribers by allowing subscribers to change their newsletter topic preferences and allowing them to receive emails less frequently—with 27% offering the former and 16% the latter during their opt-out processes.

More than 86% of retailers honored opt-outs within 3 days, with most of them effective immediately, as
evidenced by the number of emails received after opting out. Another 4% honored opt-outs within 7 days, and 3% more within 14 days. One percent took more than the CAN-SPAM-sanctioned 14 days to honor unsubscribes, and another 3% of retailers had their opt-out processes fail.

Source: Retail Email Unsubscribe Benchmark Study , DMA, Email Experience Council

The From Line

59% of major online retailers, utlize their brand name in the from line. It’s succinct, uncluttered and easy to
recognize.

Source: Sender Line Branding Tactics In Retail Emails, Email Experience Council