2013 email marketing report writeup - jose cabello › ... › 11 › 2013benchmarkreport.pdf ·...

The UK email marketing benchmark report 2013

When you’re running a small business in Britain, it can be difficult to find meaningful comparisons to measure your marketing against. We know, we tried. Reports on big businesses and US firms just aren’t that useful for a UK SME. That’s why we created our UK email marketing benchmark.

This report is the result of an analysis of over 1.1 billion email messages sent through the Sign-Up.to online marketing platform in the 12 months from 1st January - 31st December 2012. These email campaigns are all from small-medium sized UK organisations. All of these messages were permission-based and sent to opted-in lists (never to 3rd party or purchased lists).

The 22 sectors listed here have been self-selected by the senders. For details of the calculation methods and additional graphs and tables, please see the appendix at the end of this document.

These averages are a good place to start when benchmarking your performance, but remember that there are many factors which will influence your own results. When judging the success of your campaigns make sure you select relevant criteria for you and then look for incremental improvements by benchmarking against your own average results. For more on this, check out http://www.sign-up.to/resources/

Please feel free to pass this document around and post excerpts and links - all we ask it that you include a link and attribution to www.sign-up.to when you do.

You can find the latest online version of this report, and interactive versions of the charts at www.sign-up.to/email-marketing-benchmarks/email-benchmark-2013/

Overall averagesAcross all industries the average results for UK SME email marketing campaigns were:

• Open rate: 21.47%• Click-through rate: 3.16%• Unsubscription rate: 0.47%• Click-to-open rate: 14.72%• Unsubscribe-to-open rate: 2.29%

The Sign-Up.to 2013 UK Email Marketing Benchmark Report /12 © Sign-Up Technologies Ltd. 2013 Visit us at www.sign-up.to

http://www.sign-up.to/resources/

http://www.sign-up.to/resources/

http://www.sign-up.to


http://www.sign-up.to/email-marketing-benchmarks/email-benchmark-2013/

http://www.sign-up.to/email-marketing-benchmarks/email-benchmark-2013/

http://www.sign-up.to/




How do open and click-through rates compare across sectors?


Opens Clicks

B2B Sales

B2B Services

B2C Retail

Charity

Education/Training

Events

Fashion

Finance

Health/Beauty

HR/Recruitment

Industrial/Manufacturing

IT

Legal

Music

New Media

PR

Property

Publishing

Restaurants

Sales/Marketing

Sport/Leisure

Travel

0% 7.5% 15.0% 22.5% 30.0%3.98%

2.87%

3.03%

2.53%

4.26%

2.36%

2.33%

5.81%

2.20%

1.57%

1.69%

2.16%

2.52%

2.77%

2.02%

3.15%

1.52%

1.74%

3.22%

3.22%

2.19%

4.55%

22.29%

25.57%

22.90%

22.29%

21.52%

22.08%

20.35%

21.74%

21.47%

17.01%

16.41%

20.67%

19.74%

21.72%

19.02%

17.51%

17.00%

17.63%

23.58%

20.58%

20.63%

27.97%





Which sectors have the best campaign engagement?

(Higher is better)

Clicks to Opens

New Media

Publishing

Fashion

Travel

B2B Sales

B2C Retail

Charity

Sales/Marketing

HR/Recruitment

Health/Beauty

PR

Restaurants

Sport/Leisure

Property

Finance

B2B Services


IT

Music

Education/Training

Legal

Events

0% 7.5% 15.0% 22.5% 30.0%

8.97%

9.24%

9.87%

10.26%

10.30%

10.44%

10.61%

10.62%

10.69%

11.22%

11.37%

11.46%

12.75%

12.78%

13.23%

13.66%

15.64%

16.28%

17.85%

18.00%

19.78%

26.75%






Click-to-open rates give a deeper insight into campaign performance by looking at actions performed after a campaign has been opened. This puts the focus on the actual email content - its design and relevance to the recipients - and removes factors which influence open rate, like subject line and sender details.

When comparing click-to-open rates it's important to remember that different types of email campaigns will have different objectives - driving a click-through may not always be the goal of a campaign.

This year sees Business to Business Sales take the lead with a click-to-open rate of 27.97%. By comparison, in the Events category (the worst performer) many of the emails are flyers which contain all of the relevant content within the email itself rather than linking away, and so they result in a fraction of the number of clicks.






Which sectors have the highest reader loyalty?

(Lower is better)

Unsubscriptions to Opens

IT

HR/Recruitment

Sales/Marketing

Restaurants

B2B Services

Property

Education/Training

Finance

B2B Sales

B2C Retail

PR

Publishing

Health/Beauty

Events

Legal

Fashion


Travel

New Media

Charity

Sport/Leisure

Music

0% 1.25% 2.50% 3.75% 5.00%

1.24%

1.51%

1.56%

1.62%

1.82%

1.94%

1.96%

2.05%

2.10%

2.15%

2.31%

2.42%

2.46%

2.53%

2.70%

2.76%

2.84%

2.85%

2.87%

3.02%

3.40%

4.14%






To measure reader loyalty, we look at the ratio of unsubscriptions to opens - a good indicator of the relevance of a campaign to the audience. The unsubscription rate alone is a useful measure but doesn’t take into account people who simply discard messages without ever opening them - which is the worst possible result for an email marketeer.






Appendix - more charts and tables

In this appendix we’ve included charts breaking down these statistics further, as well as details of how we calculate the numbers and tables of the raw percentages, in case you’re curious!

A little bit about Sign-Up.toWe develop software and provide services and support to thousands of businesses to help them communicate better with their customers using email marketing, SMS and social media. We’ve been in business for 10 years, are still owned by the original founders, and have offices in the UK and Australia.

To find out more about what we do visit us at www.sign-up.to drop us an email at [email protected] or give us a call on 020 3355 2631 - we’d love to hear from you.




mailto:[email protected]








Which sector has the best open rate?

(Higher is better)

B2B Sales

Sport/Leisure

Charity

Sales/Marketing

Travel

Restaurants

Property

New Media

Health/Beauty

Publishing

Music


B2B Services

B2C Retail

PR

HR/Recruitment

Finance

Education/Training

Fashion

Legal

Events

IT

0% 7.5% 15.0% 22.5% 30.0%

16.41%

17.00%

17.01%

17.51%

17.63%

19.02%

19.74%

20.35%

20.58%

20.63%

20.67%

21.47%

21.52%

21.72%

21.74%

22.08%

22.29%

22.29%

22.90%

23.58%

25.57%

27.97%






Which sector has the best click-through rate?

(Higher is better)

New Media

B2B Sales

Publishing

Travel

B2C Retail

Charity

Fashion

Sales/Marketing

Sport/Leisure

Health/Beauty

Restaurants

HR/Recruitment

Property

PR

Music

B2B Services


Finance

Education/Training

IT

Legal

Events

0% 1.50% 3.00% 4.50% 6.00%

1.52%

1.57%

1.69%

1.74%

2.02%

2.16%

2.19%

2.20%

2.33%

2.36%

2.52%

2.53%

2.77%

2.87%

3.03%

3.15%

3.22%

3.22%

3.98%

4.26%

4.55%

5.81%






Which sectors get the most unsubscriptions?

(Lower is better)

B2B Sales

Sales/Marketing

IT

HR/Recruitment

Restaurants

Property

B2B Services

B2C Retail

Finance

Publishing

Education/Training

PR

Health/Beauty

Travel


Sport/Leisure

Charity

Events

Legal

New Media

Fashion

Music

0% 0.20% 0.40% 0.60% 0.80%

0.27%

0.34%

0.35%

0.35%

0.36%

0.37%

0.39%

0.40%

0.41%

0.47%

0.49%

0.49%

0.50%

0.51%

0.51%

0.59%

0.63%

0.64%

0.67%

0.68%

0.69%

0.71%






Raw data

For the numerically inclined, here are the raw percentages in table format.

Opens Clicks Unsubs Click to Open

Open to Unsub

B2B SalesB2B ServicesB2C RetailCharityEducation/TrainingEventsFashionFinanceHealth/BeautyHR/RecruitmentIndustrial/ManufacturingITLegalMusicNew MediaPRPropertyPublishingRestaurantsSales/MarketingSport/LeisureTravel

27.97% 4.55% 0.71% 16.28% 2.53%20.63% 2.19% 0.59% 10.61% 2.85%20.58% 3.22% 0.51% 15.64% 2.46%23.58% 3.22% 0.37% 13.66% 1.56%17.63% 1.74% 0.49% 9.87% 2.76%17.00% 1.52% 0.36% 8.97% 2.10%17.51% 3.15% 0.34% 18.00% 1.96%19.02% 2.02% 0.51% 10.62% 2.70%21.72% 2.77% 0.47% 12.75% 2.15%19.74% 2.52% 0.67% 12.78% 3.40%20.67% 2.16% 0.40% 10.44% 1.94%16.41% 1.69% 0.68% 10.30% 4.14%17.01% 1.57% 0.35% 9.24% 2.05%21.47% 2.20% 0.27% 10.26% 1.24%21.74% 5.81% 0.35% 26.75% 1.62%20.35% 2.33% 0.49% 11.46% 2.42%22.08% 2.36% 0.63% 10.69% 2.84%21.52% 4.26% 0.50% 19.78% 2.31%22.29% 2.53% 0.64% 11.37% 2.87%22.90% 3.03% 0.69% 13.23% 3.02%25.57% 2.87% 0.39% 11.22% 1.51%22.29% 3.98% 0.41% 17.85% 1.82%






Defining termsLet’s define some of the terms we're using as several of these figures can be (and often are!) calculated in different ways.

All figures we use are based on unique user actions - for example we only count the same recipient opening a campaign once, if they open that campaign again we don't count that as another open.

• Bounced: messages returned by the receiving mail server as undeliverable• Delivered: messages accepted for delivery by the receiving mail server (total sent -

bounced)• Open Rate: the proportion of delivered emails that were opened (measured by an image

load or link click); i.e. number opened / delivered• Clicks: the proportion of delivered emails that had a link clicked; i.e. unique clicks /

delivered• Unsubscribes: the proportion of delivered emails that result in an unsubscription; i.e.

unsubscribes / delivered

For some of the reports we use different ratios, as these are a better way to compare some aspects of campaign performance - these are:

• Clicks to Opens: the proportion of opened emails that had a link clicked; i.e. unique clicks / opens

• Unsubscribes to Opens: the proportion of opened emails that result in an unsubscription; i.e. unsubscribes / opens

We use these 'x to Open' figures as ways to compare the performance of the actual campaign content because these look at what happens after the first objective of someone actually opening the campaign has been achieved.






2013 email marketing report writeup - jose cabello › ... › 11 › 2013benchmarkreport.pdf ·...

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