It never ceases to amaze me when new e-mail marketers are surprised to find not all of their carefully crafted e-mails get opened.
“But I only sent my e-mail to my best and most loyal customers. How come they didn’t all read it straight away?”
Perhaps a reasonable question in theory but what about practice? Just what level of open-rate and click-through rate should be expected.
This is an impossible question to answer without more information as there are so many variables but I found a case study of a campaign by mobile giant O2 which makes interesting reading and gives insight into the levels of e-mail response seen by a big national/international brand.
The project involved inviting people to attend an England Rugby International via a dedicated 3D broadcast to one of 40 ‘Mini-Twickenhams’ set up around the UK:
Here are how the results reported:
We drove a quarter of a million visitors to O2 blueroom, with the emails seeing a 27% open rate (that’s 50% above O2′s average), and a 22% CTR (150% above average).We produced a 250% increase in registration for O2 Priority experiences, with those customers spending an extra £4.10 each month. The PR coverage we generated created more than £2.4 million of equivalent media spend. And the campaign paid back immediately with £250,000-worth of tickets sold to O2 customers.
The numbers in the second paragraph are perhaps not too relevant to the average SME – though they validate the programme as a major e-mail campaign!
The opening line shows interesting stats. That there were 250,000 visitors to the O2 blueroom website shows this is a statistically valid result. They also laud a 27% open rate as 50% higher than average which tells us O2′s expectation would be an open rate of 18%. Similarly the normal O2 expectation on click through rate (CTR) is around 9% (this is 9% of opened e-mails, not sent e-mails)
So we can use an Open Rate of 18% and CTR of 9% as benchmarks. If they are good enough for O2 then they are good enough for us – but now we need to try to beat them!
Back to my new e-mail marketer: maybe a 53% open rate isn’t too bad after all….
Enjoy.
