E-mail Response Rates up: DoubleClick Study

Retail and catalog companies reported higher open, clickthrough and conversion rates in the fourth quarter over the third, according to the DoubleClick e-mail trend report.

Although there was an general decrease in open and clickthrough rates for companies overall, retail and catalog industry open rates increased by 12% from 34% in the third quarter to 38% in the fourth. Clickthrough rates went up slightly, from 6.9% in Q3 to 7.1% in Q4.

Conversion rates rose 10.8% over the third quarter. An average of 4.1% of e-mail clicks drove an immediate purchase online.

In general, companies of all types experienced a decrease in clickthroughs to 8% from 5.5% in the third quarter. Open rates went down 2.5% and clickthroughs slipped by 6%.

Bounce rates were essentially flat, increasing in Q4 to 13.5% from 13.3% in Q3.

In other findings, non-text e-mail comprised 81% of e-mail sent. HTML made up 44% of that; AOL comprised 21%; and multi-part accounted for 16%.

The trend report is based on over 2 billion permission-based e-mails from hundreds of clients.