Friends-and-Family Emails Generate 85 Percent Higher Revenue Per Email than Standard Mailings with Identical Offer Values

NEW YORK, Nov. 22, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Experian Marketing Services' CheetahMail®, a global marketing leader and provider of email marketing and customer intelligence technologies, today announced the release of its latest analysis illustrating how friends-and-family emails significantly outperform other types of campaigns. The study provides today's businesses with a thorough understanding of trends surrounding friends-and-family-focused email marketing along with tactical advice stemming from the findings.

Today, most friends-and-family campaigns are not targeted, but instead distributed to entire customer files. Experian CheetahMail's study indicates that despite this trend, the perception of friends-and-family offers being "special" continues. Specific findings in support of this observation include:

• Friends-and-family emails had 43 percent higher open rates and 29 percent higher click rates compared to bulk promotions
• Revenue per email and transaction rates for friends-and-family emails were 85 percent higher and 2.5 times higher, respectively, against bulk promotions
• Compared against non–friends-and-family promotions with the same offer values, friends-and-family emails generate higher revenue per email
• Links within friends-and-family emails had much higher referral rates than emails with no social network links
• For friends-and-family campaigns, 20 percent and 30 percent off are the most common offers during the holiday season

"The goal of this research is to provide our clients with actionable data they can use to optimize email campaigns this holiday season and beyond," said Rachel Bergman, general manager and senior vice president, Experian CheetahMail. "The best email marketers know that continuous program optimization is crucial to maximizing ROI. We consider it our responsibility to help clients get the most out of every interaction they have with their subscribers."

To discover the aforementioned trends and pinpoint optimal strategies pertaining to friends-and-family email marketing, Experian CheetahMail's Strategic Services team analyzed the performance of friends-and-family email programs compared to bulk promotional campaigns in two parts: The first portion of the analysis evaluated the friends-and-family emails from 79 businesses to non-friends-and-family bulk campaigns from the same businesses from July 2009 to June 2010. The second portion focused on friends-and-family email performance during the holiday season, identifying businesses that sent friends-and-family mailings with the same offer value as non–friends-and-family mailings during the same time period.

About Experian CheetahMail

Experian® CheetahMail® is the trusted service provider of email marketing and customer intelligence technologies for top enterprises worldwide. With the industry's largest client services teams, feature-rich email technology and a broad range of data management options, Experian CheetahMail enables clients to build data-driven, relevant relationships with their customers. Servicing the world's most recognizable brands, Experian CheetahMail's globally diverse client base includes 1800Flowers, Barclays, Borders Books, Discovery Communications, KLM, Neiman Marcus and Wyndham Hotels. Experian CheetahMail, a business unit of Experian (LSE: EXPN), was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in New York City, with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Dublin, Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona, Sydney, Auckland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Madrid, Beijing and Melbourne. For more information, please visit http://www.cheetahmail.com or email [email protected].

About Experian Marketing Services

Experian Marketing Services delivers best-in-breed data, analytics and platforms into multiple regions around the globe. It is focused on helping marketers more effectively target and engage their best customers through email, digital advertising, customer data management, customer and competitive insight, data enrichment and list rental, modeling and analytics, and strategic consulting. Through these capabilities, Experian Marketing Services enables organizations to encourage brand advocacy, create measurable return on investment and significantly improve the lifetime value of their customers.

About Experian

Experian is the leading global information services company, providing data and analytical tools to clients in more than 90 countries. The company helps businesses to manage credit risk, prevent fraud, target marketing offers and automate decision making. Experian also helps individuals to check their credit report and credit score and protect against identity theft.

Experian plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN) and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 index. Total revenue for the year ended March 31, 2010, was $3.9 billion. Experian employs approximately 15,000 people in 40 countries and has its corporate headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, with operational headquarters in Nottingham, UK; Costa Mesa, California; and Sao Paulo, Brazil.

For more information, visit http://www.experianplc.com.

Experian and the Experian marks used herein are service marks or registered trademarks of Experian Information Solutions, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Experian Marketing Services' CheetahMail