1. 4 DISCUSSING
  • Lauren Hall-Stigerts   Jan 02 2013   Flag

    Interesting stats and commentary. The stat that there are 50% more opens and 100% more click-throughs on editorial emails (value emails not requiring a purchase) is testament to the power of inbound marketing.

    A little sad that the majority of this analysis is behind a pay wall, but good on him for generating revenue on hard work.

  • Chris Kolmar   Jan 03 2013   Flag

    That's incredibly awesome data.

    Those CTR are across the board horrendous. We do:

    Outreach Emails - 25% CTR

    Marketing Emails - 8% CTR

    Editorial Emails - 15% CTR

    How can you live on conversion rates that low? Is the average eCommerce purchase for like $1000?

  • Lauren Hall-Stigerts   Jan 03 2013   Flag

    No kidding, right? About half of those companies are low-margin, smalltime products too. I get the feeling the larger a mailing list / company is, the worse the CTR gets. Namely because of a need for improved targeting that most companies overlook.

  • Georgiana Laudi   Jan 04 2013   Flag

    Hey Chris, a tad off topic and not sure what your business is, but could you elaborate on "outreach emails"? in terms of marketing, I know this to be author/blogger outreach, but curious to know since it's such a large percentage of your sends. Thanks!

  • Ville Laurikari   Jan 03 2013   Flag

    Hmm.  Knowing how open rates are tracked, I hesitate to accept "open rates are skyrocketing" as fact.

    The graph indicates an increase, and the graph is labeled "open rate", but that's not exactly what is being measured here. What it is really measured is the download percentage of the invisible 1x1 tracking images embedded in each email.  As most of us know, this is not a very accurate measure and is prone to all sorts of bias based on what types of email clients are being used and other factors.

    Could the apparent increase in be explained by the increase of using iOS devices?

    It might explain some of the click-through rate drop as well–at least I don't like to click links in emails on my phone because most sites don't work well on the mobile, and when I'm on my phone I probably don't have the time anyway.  Then, back on my desktop, I wouldn't even open the email anymore because it was already marked as read on my phone. 

    It would be interesting to see trend graphs of the popularity of different email clients over time.

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