Email marketing has witnessed its most successful half year to date on the back of a triple boost – a rise in campaigns, an upsurge in email addresses under management and an increase in website traffic generated by the medium – according to figures released by trade body the DMA.
The 2010 H2 Email Benchmarking Report shows that click-through rates from emails leapt from 12 million in H2 2009 to 16.1 million in H2 2010 – an increase of 33% in the amount of traffic email is driving to clients’ websites.
The half-year also saw a 35% rise in the volume of emails being sent during H2 2010. The number of email addresses that email services providers (ESPs) manage grew across the year from 90.2 million in Q1 2010 to 101.7 million in Q4 2010.
Email marketing budgets rose through the half-year, with a third of clients spending between 21 to 40% more on email in Q4 2010 compared to Q4 2009.
The report backs the DMA’s own Email Tracking Study, with fast.MAP and Alchemy Worx, which revealed a surge in popularity among consumers over the past 12 months. The research claimed the number of consumers reporting that more than half the marketing emails they receive are of interest has increased from one in ten (9%) in 2010, to one in three (30%) in 2011.
Surveying 20 of the UK’s ESPs, the biannual Email Benchmarking Report is produced by the DMA’s Email Marketing Council.
Commenting on the findings of the report, the Council’s James Bunting said: “Email marketers in the UK are continuing to improve on their success. The DMA’s email tracking study earlier this year showed that consumers are receiving more emails of interest to them than ever before and this latest research shows that those relevant emails are working. Email is driving more traffic to websites than ever before.
“The future looks to be even brighter because this success is occurring at a time that ESPs are promising advanced tactics within their product suites enabling even greater targeting and relevance.”
Dela Quist, chief executive of Alchemy Worx – sponsors of the report, added: “Our clients are sending more emails than ever before as they begin to embrace the ‘more is more’ maxim. With increases in volume and frequency, of course, comes the corresponding challenge of producing ever more innovative emails and the demand this places on internal resources.”
The H2 2010 Email Benchmarking Report also features the latest data on strategy and segmentation, as well as open rates and deliverability. To download the report visit: www.dma.org.uk
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