Email Marketing Industry Standards
Email marketing is the act of sending consumers or clients messages or promotions via email. Email marketers must follow the rules stated in the CAN-SPAM act. Some of those rules are: you cannot email people unless they subscribe to your email list; you must immediately remove people that unsubscribe and provide an easy way to unsubscribe in each email; and you must include your company's business mailing address in each email. There are a variety of industry standards for various aspects of email marketing, most of which can be tracked by email marketing tracking tools provided by email marketing services or by your own internal email engine.
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Open Rate
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The open rate in email marketing is the percentage of people who opened your email as compared to the total number of people you emailed in a particular campaign. The average open rate is hard to pinpoint because there are so many variables. Different industries have different types of customers; high-tech customers likely open their emails more frequently than other types of customers. The open rate also depends on how many people are on your list and how frequently you send emails, as well as when you send emails. However, an average open rate for most industries falls somewhere between 20 and 35 percent. Anything over 35 percent is an excellent open rate, and anything under 20 percent can be improved on in most cases. Try more enticing subject lines, and send your emails at different times in the week until you find a time when more customers are opening your emails.
Bounce Rate
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When an email bounces, that means the email was not delivered for a number of reasons. Hard bounces are when an email was delivered to an inactive email address. The recipient might have changed or shut down the email address. Soft bounces are emails that were delivered to an active email address, but were not delivered, possibly because the inbox was full or the recipient's email server was temporarily unavailable. Like most email marketing statistics, hard and soft bounce rates vary across different industries. However, typical hard bounce rates are somewhere between 1 and 12 percent, with most hovering around 5 percent. Typical soft bounce rates are usually slightly lower, but in the same range as hard bounces. To improve your bounce rate, remove any hard bounce email addresses from your list as soon as they bounce back, and remove soft bounces after they bounce two or more times.
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Complaint Rate
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The complaint rate in email marketing is the number of people who mark your email as "spam" compared to the total number of people you send to. People can mark your email as spam either because they do not remember electing to receive the emails, or because the content of the email is not something they can relate to or connect with. To lower your complaint rate, remove any recipients that mark you as spam immediately. You can find out who marked you as spam by signing up for feedback loop notifications with most email service providers. The feedback loops send you the email address of anyone who marked your email as spam. Also, segment your list so you send campaigns only to customers the message is relevant for; not everyone on your list always needs to see every email you send. Complaint rates should generally be under 2 percent. The rate might be higher for specific campaigns, but on average, keep it under 2 percent.
Click Through Rate
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Click through rates determine the percentage of people who clicked on a link from your email. Most email marketers create emails that entice recipients to take some sort of action, like clicking through to your website to place an order, or to learn more information about a product or service. Ultimately, the goal of most email marketing campaigns is to drive sales or revenue. Many people use the click through rate to gauge how well their emails are enticing people to click on something to take further action and eventually place an order. Average click through rates are around 5 percent for most industries. To improve your click through rate, design your email to be simple and clear about what the recipient should do. Also, use attractive promotions and discounts, and use messaging that makes the reader curious about the campaign so he wants to learn more by clicking on a link from the email.
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References
- Photo Credit Businessman reading email on pda and holding a cup of coffe image by sumos from Fotolia.com
