Christmas email volumes on rise, says DMA report

The 20 email service providers (ESPs) surveyed each sent out just less than 102 million emails in the month on average, claims the DMA’s Email Benchmarking Report 2010.

But despite the volume increase the frequency with which addresses were contacted per month fell from 3 in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 2.1 in the fourth quarter of 2010.

The report posits that volumes increased while frequency dropped because of growth in the number of addresses on file, pointing out the number of email addresses held by the average ESP exceeded 100 million "for the first time in recent memory".

Throughout the year most campaigns were narrowly segmented, with the bulk going to just two to three segments, although there was growth in the four to six segment category.

When ESPs were asked which were the main barriers to using dynamic content and complex segmentation, most cited budget, resource/time and lack of data.

Email budgets grew in the fourth quarter of 2010 compared with the same quarter in 2009, with only 6.3% of senders spending less and almost a third spending between 21% and 40% more.

ESPs were very confident clients would need greater volume and strategic advice this year, but unsure about how much they would need content services.

Open rates in Q4 2010 were 11% for acquisition campaigns and 22% for retention campaigns – broadly in line with the four previous quarters. The equivalent click-through rates were 3% and 8%.

This article was first published on brandrepublic.com