Image Blocking Drops E-mail Open Rates: ExactTarget
E-mail open rates declined 16.5% in 2005 while click-through rates, or number of times someone clicked on a link in the e-mail, remained steady, according to e-mail service provider ExactTarget.
Also, open rates have dropped steadily over the past two years. In 2005, open rates dropped an average of 1.8% per quarter, according to ExactTarget, which claims to have based its findings on 2.7 billion e-mails from more than 4,000 organizations. Open rates declined to 35.5% in the 4th quarter of 2005 from 42.5% a year earlier, ExactTarget said.
Image blocking is largely responsible for declining open rates, according to Morgan Stewart, director of strategic services at ExactTarget and author of the study. A tracking image within HTML e-mails records e-mail opens. Outlook 2003 and other e-mail clients allow users to disable the display of images. When this occurs, the ability to track e-mail opens is lost. In addition, blocked images negatively impact click-through activity, according to ExactTarget.
However, click-through rates have remained steady over the past two years, with a slight upturn in the second half of 2005, according to ExactTarget. Click-through rates for the 4th quarter of 2005 increased 10% to 6.6% from 6% a year earlier, the company reported.
“Two groups have helped stabilize click-through rates: late e-mail adopters and companies leveraging re-engagement strategies for consistent non-responders,” said Stewart in a statement. “Late e-mail adopters have the advantage of established best practices in e-mail design that are more successful at getting subscribers to click-through. List fatigue also plays a role in the decline of open and click-through rates over time. Established senders can combat this by developing re-engagement and list cleansing strategies. Organizations may want to take note of these practices and give their e-mail programs a lift.”
Also, on average, there are more unique clicks for each opened e-mail. The ratio of opens-to-clicks (open rate divided by click-through rate) has declined from 6.6 in the 1st quarter of 2005 to 5.4 in 4th quarter of 2005, according to ExactTarget. “Organizations are doing a better job of designing their e-mails to drive click activity,” said Stewart. “The importance of sender and subject lines is increasing because subscribers are using them to determine if they are going to get engaged with an e-mail. Higher engagement means more clicks.”
