Email volume increased nearly 13% Q3 2013.
Experian Marketing Services, a global provider of integrated consumer insight and targeting, data quality and cross-channel marketing, showed that overall email volume increased 12.7% in Q3 2013 versus Q3 2012, according to the Experian Marketing Services 2013 Q3 Email Benchmark Report.
The cross-channel marketing leader also found that unique open rates increased 6% year-over-year in Q3 2013.
The benchmark report’s spotlight on transactional emails reveals a rise in open rates with the inclusion of a brand’s name in the subject line of transactional emails, such as shipping and order confirmations, order cancellations and return confirmations. While the use of this tactic varied widely, brand-name inclusion in only shipping confirmation emails produced significant gain with a 7%- increase in unique open rates.
Other findings include:
· Unique click rates for shipping confirmations that featured personalization reached 13.5 percent, as compared to 8.3% without personalization
· Click-to-open rates for both order and shipping confirmations that included invitations to join loyalty programs rose 26% and 16% respectively
· The strongest cross-selling results came from emails that featured dynamic product personalization; order confirmations saw the highest increase in transaction rates, from 0.65% with static cross-sells to 0.97% with dynamic cross-sells.
“Our latest Benchmark Study provides even more evidence that personal connections really do matter,” said Peter DeNunzio, general manager for cross-channel marketing at Experian Marketing Services. “Transactional emails showed 23%- higher click rates when they personally addressed a customer in the body of the email. These are the kind of emails that can help marketers generate repeat sales.”
Expanding cross-channel opportunities
After analyzing Twitter and Instagram campaigns, Experian Marketing Services identified a key trend to watch among social media mailings. In short, promoting social media in subject lines is an especially effective cross-channel practice.
Experian Marketing Services’ research involved a year-over-year comparison of this type of subject line, revealing significant growth in the percentage of emails that mention Twitter or Instagram in the subject line. Subject-line mentions of Twitter rose from 8% in Q3 2012 to 41% in Q3 2013, while mentions of Instagram climbed from 3% in Q3 2012 to 30% in Q3 2013. While subject-line mentions of Facebook also increased, from 76% in Q3 2012 to 87% in Q3 2013, mentions of Pinterest actually fell from 9% in Q3 2012 to 5% in Q3 2013.
Holiday strategy
The benchmark report also reveals a number of significant best practices for success, which can be especially important for email marketers during the holiday sales season.
“As more customers visit their favorite online destinations for holiday shopping, more password requests will occur, providing marketers with the opportunity to optimize these emails,” added DeNunzio. “Specifically, cross-sell sections in password-reset emails produced a 93% higher transaction rate than those without cross-sells items, leveraging subscribers’ existing brand interest to maximize product interest.”
Experian Marketing Services’ Q3 2013 Quarterly Benchmark Report is available to download.
