Average e-mail open and click-through rates are higher in Canada than in the U.S., if two studies that came out last week are to be taken at face value.
Open rates in Canada in 2005 were more than 55% and click-through rates averaged 8%, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada. Open rates in a study by e-mail service provider ExactTarget were 35.5% in the fourth quarter of 2005, down from 42.5% a year earlier.
Also, average click-through rates in Canada for 2005 were 8%, according to the IABC. Average click-through rates for the fourth quarter of 2005 were 6.6%, according to ExactTarget’s study of 2.7 billion e-mails from more than 4,000 organizations.
But are Canadians really that much more engaged with their e-mail? Not likely.
Turns out that when it comes to click-throughs, the IABC is counting multiple clicks in the same e-mail by the same user multiple times and ExactTarget is counting each person who opens an e-mail once no matter how many times they click.
Also, the IABC is counting open rates by measuring the number of “HTML opens,” which presumably means that the organization is counting the same user opening the same e-mail multiple times as a separate open each time.
By the IABC’s logic, I should get my family members to click on Magilla Marketing repeatedly and then ask my editor for a raise because of all the traffic I’m driving.
