First-quarter e-mail open and click-through rates have declined slightly, according to the latest E-mail Trend Report from New York-based online ad agency DoubleClick.
Open rates averaged 38.2%, down from 39.2% for the first quarter of 2003. Likewise, click-through rates fell to 8.4% from 8.9% last year. On the plus side, delivery rates–measured by the number of e-mails sent minus a hard and soft bounce-back rate–increased to 88.8% from 87.5%.
The retail/catalog and business publishing industries recorded the highest delivery rates–91.6%. But retail/catalog’s open rates dropped from 38.5% last year to 34.1%. And the sector’s click-through rates dipped from 7.6% to 7.1%.