Email Trend Benchmarking Report

Executive Summary

The Epsilon Q1 2009 Email Trends and Benchmarks study shows an increase in open rates and deliverability from Q1 2008 and a slight decrease in click rates from Q1 2008. These fi ndings reveal that email continues to be an effective marketing vehicle and additional Epsilon research shows that performance extends well beyond the channel.

Epsilon’s recent Global Consumer Email Study revealed consumers are taking a variety of offl ine actions as a result of permission-based email communications. These trends are apparent around the globe with 59% of Asia Pacifi c consumers making an offl ine purchase as a result of email communications, followed by 53% in North America and 37% in Europe.
Based on this research and the latest quarterly Email Trends and Benchmarks, email marketing continues to drive strong results.

Sophisticated marketers are incorporating triggers, transactions, preferences, segmentation and other advanced analytics to produce more successful campaigns.

The Epsilon Q1 2009 Email Trends and Benchmarks study compiled from 6 billion emails sent by Epsilon in Q1 (January – March) 2009, across multiple industries and more than 200 clients. This benchmark data should be used only as a guideline – specifics for each company will drive results.

Q1 2009 Overall Performance

• Deliverability continues to remain stable at 94.1%, up from 93.4% in Q1 2008.
• Open rates increased for the third quarter in a row, with 12 of the 16 industries measured seeing an increase over Q1 2008.
• Click rates increased slightly to 6.1% from 5.8% in Q4 2008, yet are down slightly compared to Q1 2008when rates were 6.4%.
• Average volume per client is up 12% from this same time last year.

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