National email benchmarking report H1 2012

Welcome to the National email benchmarking report H1 2012. Alchemy Worx is proud to sponsor the DMA’s benchmarking reports as they are invaluable for UK email marketers, representing the only pan-ESP benchmarks for email metrics in the UK. The headline figure from this report is undoubtedly the continued growth in email send volumes. Although it has slowed from 85% to 29% since the last report, overall growth since H1 2010 stands at an impressive 58% - and all this in what has been reported as a difficult few years for the marketing industry as a whole. This is not a trend confined to the UK, as we saw the same huge increases in send volumes in the US. Better still, our clients tell us that email is the only marketing channel that is consistently on the up year after year and the report supports this very positive view.

So how has this upward trend affected the key metrics of opens and clicks? Unique open rates have slightly improved since 2011 but are down on 2010, while unique click rates have continued to fall gently since H2 2010. However, the actual number of clicks, which is not included in the report, exceeded half a billion. As conversion rates for email are 60% higher than search, it is no wonder brands are using email to drive traffic to their websites.

Based on these figures alone, it’s clear that email is playing an increasingly more important role in the marketing mix. Indeed, it now seems implausible that only a few years ago commentators were predicting email send volumes would fall as senders shunned broadcast email in favour of smaller, more targeted campaigns. In fact, marketers have realised the significant impact send volume can have on the bottom line and have increased broadcast email alongside more targeted campaigns. As a result, the balance between targeted and untargeted is becoming ever more diffuse.

But contrary to popular opinion, successfully sending more email is much harder than sending less. It takes more budget and resource, as well as greater skill in strategy, creative, content, offers, subject lines, reporting & analysis, data management, list building and even deliverability. Our responsibility as email marketers is to step up our game in all of these areas so that we can send more email without any negative impact. And, as email programmes necessarily become more ambitious and complex to achieve that goal, the role of email specialists becomes increasingly more important.

The benchmarking hub is currently revieing the report and need your views to inform them on how to improve the report going forward. Please answer this survey and give us your views.

Long may the success continue!

Dela Quist,

CEO, Alchemy Worx

dela@alchemyworx.com

National email benchmarking report H1 2012