Informz, an email service provider for associations and non-profits, has published their annual association email marketing benchmark report. One of the key findings is that relevancy, not timing, is key (for this industry). The report contains data from 700 assocations using their platform, and those are located in the US, Canda, UK, New Zealand and Australia. Email volume sent over 2011 amounts to about 600 million.
Key findings of the report as noted in the press release:
- The average email metrics for associations include a 98.28% delivery rate, 34.33% open rate, 19.49% click rate and a 0.052% unsubscribe rate.
- As with the 2011 results, this year’s study found that the day of the week sent had little effect on the open and click results.
- Emails sent in the morning resulted in the highest open rates at 39.2%, while mid-afternoon reported the highest click rates at 21.0%.
- For the third year, desktop email software usage continued to decline, while mobile email usage increased to 17%.
- In this study, iPhone was the leader in the mobile device category at 12% while iPad reported at 4% and Android at 3%.
- Shorter subject lines continued to outperform their longer counterparts. Fewer than 10 characters achieved the best open rate at 58%.
- 49% of emails sent were read by recipients (opened for longer than 10 seconds) while 35% of emails were opened for less than 3 seconds.
- Survey-related emails had the highest combined open and click rates with 36.60% average opens and 33.39% clicks. Appeal-related emails had the lowest click rate of the emails studied at 14.63%
Some key takeaways (limited to this benchmark report, of course):
– shorter subjects perfrom better
– day of the week has little effect on opens/clicks
– desktop email keeps declining year over year
A quote from the Informz CEO, Joe Tyler:
“The Informz Benchmark Report is unique in that it offers industry-specific email marketing metrics to associations,” said Joe Tyler, CEO of Informz. “The results from this year’s report support the idea that the relevancy of an email’s content has a greater impact on email results than factors like email timing. This type of information can aide associations in creating email programs that deliver better results.”
The full report is apparently available on the Informz website, thanks to Maarten for posting the correct link in the comments.
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