Survey: E-mail Delivery Rates Up Slightly

According to an e-mail marketing survey by online advertising firm DoubleClick, overall delivery rates of marketing e-mails (e-mails sent minus bounce-back rates) increased slightly, from 86.5% in the fourth quarter of 2002 to 87.3% during the fourth quarter of 2003.

Open rates rose even more slightly, from 36.4% to 36.8%. Click-through rates increased from 8.0% to 8.4%. Among individual marketing categories, travel-related e-mail marketers saw their click-through rates increase from 5.8% to 7.6%, business products and services click-throughs jumped from 6.9% to 8.9%.

Among the retailers and catalogers surveyed, every 1,000 e-mails they sent during the fourth quarter of 2003 resulted in a mean 3.2 purchases. Put another way, 0.32% of e-mails generated a purchase. The revenue per e-mail delivered averaged $0.26.