Transactional Emails That Include Cross-Sell Items Have 20 Percent Higher Transaction Rates Than Those Without

NEW YORK, Sept. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Experian Marketing Services, a global marketing leader and provider of email marketing and customer intelligence technologies, today announced the findings of a new study from its email marketing technology, Experian CheetahMail. The study, titled The transactional email report: Benchmark data and analysis for connecting purchase behavior to email marketing, indicates that on average, transactional emails that include relevant and related products and services have 20 percent higher transaction rates than those without. The study proves the significant monetary value associated with transactional emails and that it is well worth the effort for marketers to make transactional emails as relevant and engaging as possible.

By analyzing more than 1,800 order, ship and return/exchange confirmations compared with promotional emails sent from March 2009 through February 2010, Experian CheetahMail's Strategic Services team was able to thoroughly gauge the impact of and determine optimal best practices for transactional email marketing. Data-driven recommendations include linking to social media sites, adding email sign-up opportunities, and including cross-sell items driven by predictive models and recommendation engines.

Experian CheetahMail's study finds that customers engage with transactional emails at a much higher rate than they do with promotional and branding-focused campaigns. Interestingly, in spite of high engagement and open rates, the analysis showed that order and ship confirmations that did not include offers to incent a subsequent purchase had 7 percent and 11 percent better transaction rates, respectively, than those that included offers. Transactional emails that included links to social media sites had 55 percent higher click rates than emails with no click-through opportunities.

"We have talked to clients for years about the importance of transactional emails since by definition they are sent to the most important audience at the most appropriate time," said Rachel Bergman, general manager and senior vice president, Experian CheetahMail. "Many companies are still sending transactional email from their ecommerce systems, many of which are not able to send email in HTML or include dynamic up-sell/cross-sell offers. We hope this study gives our clients the ammunition they need to put additional resources into optimizing these incredibly valuable communications."

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 CheetahMail