Email Marketing News
Open rates 'no longer relevant'
Tuesday, 16 September 2008Open rates are no longer a valid way of measuring the effectiveness of email marketing, it has been claimed.
Speaking to DMNews, Jordan Ayan, chief executive and founder of SubscriberMail, said that measuring open rates alone cannot offer the full picture when it comes to email marketing metrics.
"The open rate may have some validity when comparing test cells, or when trying to understand relative interest levels between messages," he explained.
"However, it only indicates the presence of some¬thing - it does not provide anything in the way of details."
Despite this, Erik Gabrielson of Premiere Global Services explained that measuring open rates can be of some use to marketers, particularly when including the number of people who have clicked on a message rather than opening it.
He also highlighted the benefits of utilising open rates for branding measurement purposes, as well as for audience segmentation.
Epsilon International recently released research findings suggesting that UK email marketing click-throughs rose by 11.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2008, despite recorded open rates falling by 14.8 per cent.