Email delivery rates hit all time highs in the last quarter of 2004, while open rates dropped and click through remained steady, according to a new report by internet analysis company Doubleclick.
The end of 2004 saw delivery rates increase by 3.3 percentage points on 2003, up to 90.6% compared to 87.3% at the end of 2003. Open rates fell to 32.6% in 2004 from 36.8% in 2003, a drop of 4.2 percentage points, while click-through rates went down slightly to 8.0% at the end of last year from 8.4% in 2003.
The image blocking technology used by many email programmes has caused problems for measuring open rates by tracking image calls, which could be one of the reasons for the decline in open rates, according to Doubleclick.
Before image blocking, many emails may have registered as “opened” when they had merely shown up in an email preview window as a user scrolled through emails or clicked on them before deleting.
The report also revealed that bounce rates fell to 9.4% in 2004, the lowest since Doubleclick began tracking. This finding indicates that companies have been increasingly successful in screening out bad emails and effectively collecting email addresses.
Research released earlier this year by email intelligence body, Return Path, revealed that most consumers check to see if they know and trust a sender before opening an email (see Email Campaigns Receive Mixed Reception).
Almost 60% of respondents to Return Path’s survey cited knowing the sender as the most influential factor when opening emails, compared to 41.1% who opened emails because of a subject line or the 19% who had their attention grabbed by the preview window.
A study published last year by Doubleclick showed that two thirds of received emails are still considered as spam by consumers (see Email Becomes More Popular As A Marketing Tool).
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