Q4 2010 North America Email Trend Results: Conversion Rates Strongest Over Two-Year Period

New York, NY, March 10, 2011 — The Direct Marketing Association’s Email Experience Council and Epsilon today released the Q4 2010 North America Email Trends and Benchmarks Results, which show an increase in conversion rates of 16.1 percent over Q4 2009. The 2.9 percent conversion rate is the strongest over a two-year period.

The quarterly analysis is compiled from 7.4 billion emails sent by Epsilon in October, November, and December 2010, across multiple industries and approximately 150 participating clients. The analysis combines data from both of Epsilon’s proprietary platforms, DREAM and DREAMmail.

Report Highlights:

• Open rates (22.1 percent) saw little change over the two-year period, increasing 5 percent from the same time two years ago. Four of the thirteen reported industries saw an increase in open rates over Q4 2009.

• The average click rate is 5.1 percent, a decrease from the same time last year (5.9 percent).
  

• The average volume per client increased 34.3 percent from Q3 2010 with a big push during the holiday season. Volume also increased 18.5 percent over the same quarter last year.

• Conversion rates increased 11.3 percent over last quarter and 16.1 percent over last year. The 2.9 percent conversion rate is the strongest over a two-year period.

• Messages categorized as Service messages had the highest open rates (38.2 percent) and click rates (8.0 percent).

"Although volumes hit record highs for the season, response rates remained quite stable, again proving that email marketing is an effective tool to reach people while they are in the market for a particular product or service,” according to Kevin Mabley, senior vice president of strategic & analytic consulting at Epsilon. “Email marketing drives consumer behavior, builds brands and increases revenue. We recommend that email marketers track behaviors and analyze campaigns in order to continue to improve performance and create deeper connections with consumers.”

“Double digit increases in email volume, conversion rates, median order size and revenue per email confirm what the DMA has heard elsewhere. Companies in the 2010 holiday season invested more in email marketing and saw better results after two difficult years,” said Yoram Wurmser, director of marketing & media insights, Direct Marketing Association.

For more information and industry-specific benchmarks, the Q4 2010 Email Trends and Benchmark report is available at www.epsilon.com/pr/Q410emailbenchmarks.

About the Email Experience Council

The Direct Marketing Association’s Email Experience Council is a global professional organization that strives to enhance the image of email marketing and communications, while celebrating and actively advocating its critical importance in business and its ROI value.

We are committed to regularly conducting a broad series of initiatives for a variety of organizations that highlight the positive impact and importance of email as a marketing tool, communications vehicle and branding device. Additionally, eec members are setting the standards for email through our Member Roundtables. The members who belong to our organization are representatives of other trade organizations, agencies, advertisers, technology partners, clients and companies focused on the potential of email marketing via mobile and other digital devices. We encourage you to become part of the eec at http://emailexperience.org/member-center/why-join-eec.

About Epsilon

Epsilon is the industry’s leading marketing services firm, with a broad array of data-driven, multichannel marketing solutions that leverage consumer insight to help brands deepen their relationships with customers. Services include strategic consulting, acquisition and customer database technologies, loyalty management, proprietary data, predictive modeling and a full range of direct and digital agency services, including creative, interactive web design, email deployment, search engine optimization and direct mail production. In addition, Epsilon is the world's largest permission-based email marketer. Epsilon is an Alliance Data company. For more information, visit www.epsilon.com or call 1.800.309.0505.