Epsilon and the Email Experience Council today released the Q1 2010 North America Email Trends and Benchmarks Results which show an increase from Q1 2009 in open rates and steady click rates.

 The quarterly analysis is compiled from 6 billion emails sent by Epsilon in January, February and March 2010, across multiple industries and approximately 160 participating clients.  The analysis combines data from both of Epsilon’s proprietary platforms, DREAM and DREAMmail. Report Highlights: 

•     Open rates remain strong at 22.4%, increasing 1.1% from Q1 2009. Eight of the thirteen industries had an increase in open rates over Q1 2009.

•     The average click rate is 6.0%, up slightly from the previous quarter (Q4 2009).

•     The average volume per client decreased 10% from the last quarter coming out of the holiday season, but was up 25% from Q1 2009.

•     Nearly 61% of emails delivered by Epsilon were categorized as Marketing messages. 

•     Services messages had the highest open (41.1%) and click (6.8%) rates.

According to Kevin Mabley, Senior Vice President of Strategic & Analytic Consulting at Epsilon, "Email is a critical component of our clients’ multichannel marketing strategies. Not only does email enable effective and highly-measurable one-to-one communications but it also offers marketers the ability to incorporate complex capabilities such as real-time messaging and personalization. In a recent study by Epsilon on the topic of customer experiences and perceptions, consumers cited email as the number one preferred channel to receive information. It’s no surprise then that orders per email delivered remain strong.” “Knowing the performance of your email campaigns over time is great, but it may not tell you how you stack up against others. This report shows the actual numbers from thousands of email campaigns quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. As the industry standard, the Email Trends and Benchmarks show that marketers are sending more emails with stronger open and click-through rates,” said Jeanniey Mullen, Global Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Zinio LLC and VIVmag and Founder of the Email Experience Council. For more information and industry-specific benchmarks, the Q1 2010 Email Trends and Benchmark report is available at www.epsilon.com/pr/Q110emailbenchmarks. 

 About Epsilon Epsilon is the industry’s leading marketing services firm, with a broad array of data-driven, multichannel marketing solutions that leverage consumer insight to help brands deepen their relationships with customers. Services include strategic consulting, acquisition and customer database technologies, loyalty management, proprietary data, predictive modeling and a full range of direct and digital agency services, including creative, interactive web design, email deployment, search engine optimization and direct mail production. In addition, Epsilon is the world's largest permission-based email marketer.

Experience Council The Direct Marketing Association’s Email Experience Council is a global professional organization that strives to enhance the image of email marketing and communications, while celebrating and actively advocating its critical importance in business and its ROI value. We are committed to regularly conducting a broad series of initiatives for a variety of organizations that highlight the positive impact and importance of email as a marketing tool, communications vehicle and branding device. Additionally, eec members are setting the standards for email through our Member Roundtables. The members who belong to our organization are representatives of other trade organizations, agencies, advertisers, technology partners, clients and companies focused on the potential of email marketing via mobile and other digital devices. We encourage you to become part of the eec at http://join.emailexperience.org.
http://www.directmarketingnewswire.com/2010/June/Q1-21-North-America-Email-Trend-Results-Open-Rates-Remain-Strong-.htm