Despite growing concerns about over-e-mailing and the proliferation of spam, e-mail performance metrics remain stable, according to marketing tools provider DoubleClick. In its Q2 2003 E-mail Trend Report, the New York-based company found that second quarter e-mail bounce rates declined 2.4% from 13.6% for the second quarter 2002 to 11.5% this year. E-mail open rates increased 3.2%, from 37.6% in 2002 to 38.8% in this year. Total click-through rates increased 10.7% from 7.5% to 8.3% year-over-year.
Looking at retail and catalog e-mails, delivery rates increased to 91.3% in the second quarter (up 6.9% from 85.4% in 2002), open rates rose to 37.0% (up 14.9% over 2002) and click rates reached 6.7% (up 9.8% from 6.1% in Q2 2002). While travel e-mails improved a bit in performance over Q2 2002, business products and services, and business publisher e-mails both saw slight declines. Performance of consumer products and services, and consumer publisher e-mails, were relatively constant year-over-year.
The DoubleClick E-mail Trend Report contains aggregate data from DoubleClick’s DARTmail e-mail delivery technology. The second quarter data is based on more than 2 billion permission-based e-mails from hundreds of clients. The full results are available to DoubleClick customers and an executive summary is available at: www.doubleclick.net/us/knowledge.