Should you consider industry standards for Open and Click rates?

Our eMarketing team is often approached by clients for industry statistics on open and click rates in an attempt to measure email marketing campaigns.

While wanting to benchmark your campaign results against an industry average is understandable, it is somewhat misplaced as no two target audiences, campaign messages or commercial relationships are the same.

Open rate is influenced by many factors:

• The relationship between your brand and the recipient - have you historically provided relevant and valuable content, so as to build a trust relationship with the target audience?
• The relevancy of the content to that recipient - is the offer/message in this campaign relevant to that recipient, at that moment?
• The subject line and from address - can you slice through the inbox clutter (especially at this time of year when the noise reaches peak levels)?

Click-through rate is also influenced by the above factors, especially the recipient's previous interaction with the company. If customers have a relationship with the brand, they're more likely to click through on a call to action that interests them. Click-through rate is also influenced by a couple more factors:

• Call to action - is the action required to take up the offer clear and simple?
• Timing - have you tested what day of the week and time of day gets the best response?
• Layout - people read emails in a specific way. To achieve the best possible click through rate, have you tested which layouts produce the highest response?

Because no two campaigns could have identical elements in each of the influencing factors, the usefulness of an 'industry standard' is questionable.

Create your own standard

A better approach is to create your own benchmark by measuring your own campaigns against the contributing factors and then strive to improve on those rates. If you send out an email newsletter, then look to better the open and click-through rates on the previous edition. This will also drive the right measurements, as well as shape your split-test plan. For example; if October's newsletter beat all your previous open rates - record what you did, and test that approach in your next edition. This way, you are constantly aiming to improve on your own measurements.

But make sure you always measure the rates in the same way, otherwise the exercise is pointless.

Can't do without industry benchmarks?

If you still feel you need to measure against some kind of industry averages, here are some useful resources:

Mailchimp's Email Marketing Benchmarks by Industry
Mailer Mailer's Email Marketing Metrics Report
Online Marketing Trends

Alison Treadaway
striata.com