Epsilon – Triggered Emails driving up overall open and click through rates

Triggered emails sending open & click rates skyward

A new report from Epsilon titled Q1 2013 North America Email Trends and Benchmarks report highlights several new & distinct trends. Overall, open rates improved from 27.4% in Q4 (a previous high) to 31.1% in Q1, while open rates bounced up to 5.1%, after spending 2012 in the 4% range. Great news for marketers who rely on email marketing to drive messages and campaigns. However, the real news is the numbers within the numbers. Triggered Emails (Drip Marketing in Boingnet version 2 parlance) have absolutely exploded in terms of use and effectiveness. The study highlights include:

Triggered Highlights:

• Triggered messages accounted for 3.3% of total volume, an increase of 41.1% over Q1 2012 (2.3%)
• Triggered open rates were 60.8% higher in Q113 compared to BAU messages
• Triggered click rates continued to perform well, reporting 116.9% higher than BAU (Business As Usual) messages

Clearly, triggered emailing and drip marketing are beginning to realize their potential in terms of engaging with consumers on content that is meaningful and relevant in their busy, multi-screen, multi-channel worlds.  Most of the activity appears to be driven today by retailers who are trying to get consumers to finish off orders when shopping carts are abandoned. We at Boingnet of course think that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and that all marketers should be engaging in drips and triggers as a part of any multi-channel campaign, B2C or B2B. Epsilon’s report appears to back up our thinking, as Judy Loschen, Vice President of Digital Analytics at Epsilon states “Triggered emails often outperform their Business As Usual counterparts because they’re deployed based on an action the consumer has taken or milestone they’ve identified. Marketers leveraging triggered messages are taking advantage of a moment of engagement to create a stronger experience for a consumer,” Loschen said. “In Q1 we noted an even more significant increase in triggered email click rates when compared to BAU than previous studies. Nearly every industry category analyzed had a lift—from 70% up to 442%. Triggered emails are an optimal means to continuously connect with consumers where and when they are attentive and ready to hear from your brand.”

Stay tuned for more on drip marketing as a concept and triggered emails specifically from Boingnet. We think that integrated campaigns where triggered messages drive consumers, prospects and customers back to personalized, meaningful campaign specific web micro-sites will become the norm, rather than the exception, in coming years.