Email

What are good email marketing open and click rates?

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

I'm a fan of using email marketing as part of a broader marketing plan as long as it is not abused and functions as a platform to share information the recipient will find valuable as opposed to shameless product pitches. 

There are lots of different options here including self-service ones like VerticalResponse (which I currently use), Constant Contact, and MailChimp as well as ones like Portland-based eROI and Nashville, TN-based Emma which integrate agency services along with the email capability.  The full list of options is very long (including Atlanta-based Silverpop & Seattle neighbor WhatCounts) and I know I am not doing it justice here.

The purpose of this post is to dig into what are good results from an email marketing campaign.  How many opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, etc. are actually good when compared to what is best in class?

I know what I have seen in my efforts and am happy to discuss one-on-one if you are interested.  Here is what I found after a few quick searches:

  • Great chart from the folks at MailChimp with a breakdown by industry (small businesses).  The average of the averages (sorry mathematicians) pegs this around a 25% open rate with just over a 4% click rate looking across some 273M sent emails. Unsubscribes are pretty low at .36% while hard bounces (not a valid email) seem high to me at almost 6%.  People change jobs and email addresses go stale but I have not seen a result this high or it could be due an extended interval between sends.

  • Good stats posted on eMarketer although pegging the high end of list size at 1000+ seems curious to me (my lists are always much larger than this and I hope yours are too).  Their citation of a report by MailerMailer puts the "worldwide" open rate at 12.5% at the end of 2008.

I'm not sure I am leaving you with what is best in class but at least this can function as a frame of reference.  I am not an email marketing expert by any means but believe in it and its responsible use for any organization.

So, what is Gist?

/ Robert Pease / 1 Comment

Arguably, we have been perfectly vague publicly about what Gist is, what it is used for, and how it fits into your daily life.  This is due in large part to being in a limited release where we continue to add features, refine the product, and incorporate feedback from a phenomenal set of beta users. 

So the question remains, what is Gist?  Is it a contact manager, better contact management system, new way to think about CRM software, a new type of sales or business intelligence software?  I guess the answer is that it embraces a bit of all of these things focusing on blending how your contacts, connections, and all the associated content you share and they generate comes together for your use.  Kind of a whole new approach to personal relationship management that combines elements of all of the above.

I use it daily because a) I work there and b) because it fits with what I do – contact people, respond to people, follow up with people, look for a reason to reach out, etc.  Ultimately, Gist takes the broad set of people that you communicate with or desire to communicate with, aggregates information about them, and serves it up to you in rank order with you having to do pretty much nothing. Oh, and it really shines when you use it inside MS Outlook or Salesforce.com (supported in our most recent beta release).

Sound cool?  Watch this video for a more detailed product tour by yours truly and drop a comment or email to me – robertcpease at gmail dot com if you want to try the beta.