Internet marketing company DoubleClick published its final report over the bulk email marketing evolution this year. The figures show year-over-year increase in delivery rates (cleaner emailing lists), and a decrease in open rates and click-through rates. The variations are light, proving a steady and maturing environment.

DoubleClick's metrics

The data analyzed were based on more than 2 billion messages sent by hundreds DARTmail customers, measuring bouncebacks, open rates, click-throughs and conversions (open to sales, or click to sales ratio). The results were reported for 2004 and compared to 2003.

DoubleClick used unweighted averages for all analyzed categories. This helps eliminating the influence that large email marketers could have over category averages, as the report states.

The email marketing categories considered in the study were:

• Business Products & Services
• Consumer Products
• Consumer Services
• Financial Services
• Travel
• Retail&Catalog
• Publisher - Business
• Publisher - Consumer

Email marketing performances

The bounce rates show a slight decline overall, and a more consistent decline in the Travel category, down 54.5% from 14.3% to 6.5%.

Business Publishers was the only category that increased open rates, however slightly, from 38.2 to 38.3. For other categories, open rates declined. The open rates' decline in most categories is possibly owed to SPAM increase and reveals people's reticence to open messages they are not highly interested in.

Click through rates increased in only two categories, Consumer Publisher and Travel.

More interestingly, email-productivity has shown better figures in number of orders per email sent: 0.28% in 2004; but the average revenue per email sent declined 26.9 percent. The average email order throughout 2004 was $89, in a year-over-year declining trend.

Conclusion

About the overall productivity of bulk email marketing the report concludes: "email marketing is a maturing and relatively stable marketing tool. Improvements in list hygiene and address collection processes seem to have improved bounce rates, but flagging response rates suggest subscriber files are beginning to mature."