E-mail marketing benchmarks. What is a good response rate?
What constitutes a good response rate? is a subjective question.
For example, which is better?:
- 0.01% response: 1 contact from your list of 10000 who delivers lots of business to you
- 10% response: 1000 people who just want to take up your free offer but will never buy
Obvious really but it does illustrate that quality is at least as important as quantity. However it does beg the question: What is a good response rate? How may people should you expect to open your carefully crafted message? What are meaningful e-mail marketing benchmarks?
Probably less than you think! As well as being a great feature of e-mail marketing, the fact that you can track opens, clicks, bounces and unsubscribes also lays bare the reality of how much penetration your message actually makes. With Direct Mail, you never really know how many get thrown straight in the bin – and ignorance is definitely bliss!
E-mail marketing benchmarks are notoriously difficult to pin down as there are so many variables. I think it is better to take available data and then use common sense and your own knowledge of your own business to draw conclusions appropriate for you.
Subscription e-mail marketing SWAS (software as service) company Sign-Up-To has, for the past few years, produced annual reports giving an overview of e-mail marketing response rates across industry. the report makes interesting reading. Click here to download a copy.
If you have any questions re benchmarking your own e-mail marketing, get in touch
