E-mail marketing is considered one of the most valuable assets of any marketing organization, and for good reason. ROI is generally much higher compared to other forms of online marketing. Yet despite success in most opt-in email-marketing programs, a large amount of messages are deflected due to anti-spam measures or junk folders. Below shows a graphical representation of the average inbox placement rate for e-mail in North America. Only 79.3% of messages ever make it to their intended recipient, while almost 21% is lost in cyberspace.
On the B2B side of things, delivery of e-mail messages serves slightly worse, at only a 72.4% success rate. This may be a result of more advanced spam blockers and tighter restrictions in corporate environments.
Broken down by ISP, Gmail subscribers were the hardest to reach with a 23% failure rate. Other popular e-mail services such as Hotmail and MSN were not far behind at 20%, with Cox appearing to have highest delivery success rate.
E-mail marketers must be careful in applying best practices when creating and sending out marketing campaigns, in addition to checking the relevance to the recipient. Otherwise they may find the bulk of their announcements in a possible prospect’s junk mail folder.
Source: eMarketer, August 7, 2009
