Education, Computer Hardware and Retail are Highest Performing Industries in Silverpop's 2013 Email Marketing Benchmarks Study

ATLANTA, April 17, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Silverpop™, the only digital marketing technology provider that unifies marketing automation, email, mobile and social, today announces the findings of its 2013 Email Marketing Benchmarks Study. The report goes beyond standard email marketing benchmarks, providing a breakdown of data by top-quartile, median and bottom-quartile performers and analysis by industry and geography. In this year's report, Education, Computer Hardware, Telecom and Electronics and Retail were the highest performing verticals.

"In today's very multichannel world, email still plays a critical role in marketing departments across all industries," said Loren McDonald, vice president of industry relations for Silverpop. "Email remains the most effective channel for delivering personalized, dynamic messages at the right time. For marketers seeking to set their messages apart from the rest of the pack, this benchmark report serves as a baseline for them to not only see where they stand against their peers, but also the direction—and how far—they need to go to be considered a top performer."

The goal of the study is to help marketers determine if their email program is on par, ahead of, or lagging behind top performers. The data also provides realistic insight for marketers to see how far they need to go to achieve optimal performance metrics. Silverpop studied the email messages of 2,787 brands distributed throughout 2012. It includes metrics and analysis on the following measurements:

• Open rates (including unique, gross, opens per opener)
• Click-through rates (including click-to-open and clicks per clicker)
• Message size
• List churn (including hard bounce, unsubscribes and spam complaints)

Some of the most interesting findings come from the best performing industries and top-quartile performers, which include the top 25 percent of the best results in each category. Those findings include:

• Emails sent by top performers in the "Education" vertical had the highest unique open rate (46.1 percent) and highest click-through rate (12.8 percent)
• Of all of the verticals in the study, "Healthcare" had the best click-to-open rate (33 percent), which measures click-through rates as a percentage of messages opened
• Top-quartile performers achieved click-through rates nearly four times higher than the median, 8.8 percent vs. 2.3 percent 
• Bottom-quartile performers had a hard bounce rate of 6.9 percent, while top quartile companies experienced a rate of only 0.1 percent
• Top quartile performers achieved a rate of 2.37 opens per openers, 45 percent higher than the median and 67 percent higher than the bottom quartile
• Top-quartile performers had click-through rates nearly four times higher than the median (8.8 percent vs. 2.3 percent)

"The top performers in the study are doing an excellent job of ensuring their contacts are as engaged as possible and are also probably quite strict with their data cleansing processes," McDonald added. "For the particular verticals that performed especially well, it's logical to reason that they have very personalized and oftentimes time-sensitive information to share with their recipients. While messaging will differ from vertical to vertical, this offers yet another good lesson that all email communications should be highly personalized, relevant and targeted."    

To download the complete report, click here.  

About Silverpop
Silverpop is the only digital marketing technology provider that unifies marketing automation, email, mobile, and social. Its customers achieve superior Return on Relationship by uniquely engaging each individual based on their behaviors and then automating personalized experiences that increase revenue, improve ROI, and deepen brand loyalty. Silverpop's commitment is to offer a platform that is complete, not complex—so that marketers from any size organization can easily achieve digital marketing success. The company offers a world-class services team, 24/7 customer support and a network of partners to ensure that every client gets the right mix of solutions for their specific digital marketing needs. Silverpop is trusted by more than 5,000 brands around the globe.  Visit us at silverpop.com. 

Media Contacts:
Stacy Kirk
Manager of Corporate Communications-Silverpop
[email protected] 
770-661-0633

SOURCE Silverpop