Marketing As Usual. Not A Chance.

RESEARCH JULY 2009

Epsilon Q1 2009
Email Trends and Benchmarks

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Executive Summary
The Epsilon Q1 2009 Email Trends and Benchmarks study shows an increase in open rates and deliverability from Q1 2008
and a slight decrease in click rates from Q1 2008. These findings reveal that email continues to be an effective marketing vehicle
and additional Epsilon research shows that performance extends well beyond the channel.

Epsilon’s recent Global Consumer Email Study revealed consumers are taking a variety of offline actions as a result of
permission-based email communications. These trends are apparent around the globe with 59% of Asia Pacific consumers
making an offline purchase as a result of email communications, followed by 53% in North America and 37% in Europe.
Based on this research and the latest quarterly Email Trends and Benchmarks, email marketing continues to drive strong results.
Sophisticated marketers are incorporating triggers, transactions, preferences, segmentation and other advanced analytics
to produce more successful campaigns.

The Epsilon Q1 2009 Email Trends and Benchmarks study compiled from 6 billion emails sent by Epsilon in Q1 (January – March)
2009, across multiple industries and more than 200 clients. This benchmark data should be used only as a guideline – specifics
for each company will drive results.

Q1 2009 Overall Performance

Q1 2009 Deliverability, Open and Click Rates
100%
„ Deliverability continues to remain stable at 94.1%, z
z z z z
90% z z z z
95.1%
up from 93.4% in Q1 2008. 93.7% 94.3%
93.1% 93.4% 93.2% 93.6% 94.4% 94.1%
80%

„ Open rates increased for the third quarter in a 70%

row, with 12 of the 16 industries measured seeing an 60%

increase over Q1 2008. 50%

40%

„ Click rates increased slightly to 6.1% from 5.8% in 30%

22.1% 22.1%
„ 20.7% 20.7% 19.8% 19.9% 18.8% 19.8% 20.9% „
Q4 2008, yet are down slightly compared to Q1 2008 20% „ „ „ „ „ „ „

when rates were 6.4%. 10% 7.2%

S 6.2%
S
6.5%
S 6.1% 6.4%
S 5.9% 5.9% 5.8% 6.1%
S S S S S
0%
Q107 Q207 Q307 Q407 Q108 Q208 Q308 Q408 Q109
„ Average volume per client is up 12% from this same
z Delivery „ Open rate S Click-through
time last year.
Starting Q407, data represents all DREAM and DREAMmail clients

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Industry Performance Click Rate Comparison

(Q1 09 vs Q1 08)
6.4%
Business Products and Services, Consumer Business Products and Services General 5.4%
6.3%
Packaged Goods, Pharmaceutical, Telecom and Business Publishing/Media General 6.3%
9.7%
General Retail all saw an increase in all three major Consumer Products CPG 9.3%
7.5%
metrics – deliverability, opens and clicks – compared Consumer Products General 7.7%
7.6%
to last year. None of the industries measured saw a Consumer Products Pharmaceutical 6.7%
6.5%
decline in each of those same metrics. Consumer Publishing/Media General 8.6%
5.5%
Consumer Services General 6.7%
Consumer Services Telecom 6.8%
5.1%
Open Rate Comparison Financial Services CC/Banks 4.8%
(Q1 09 vs Q1 08) 3.4%
Financial Services General 7.8%
29.1% 8.3%
Business Products and Services General 22.9% 2.8%
Non-Profit/Education General
17.8% 2.8%
Business Publishing/Media General 16.2% 4.1%
Retail Apparel
17.1% 4.6%
Consumer Products CPG 16.4% 3.9%
Retail Electronics 7.7%
Consumer Products General 23.8%
20.8% Retail General 6.0%
26.6% 5.0%
Consumer Products Pharmaceutical 16.9% 3.4%
Retail Specialty
16.7% 3.6%
Consumer Publishing/Media General 5.3%
15.9% Travel/Hospitality Travel Services
20.0% 5.7%
Consumer Services General 24.7%
22.9%
Q1 2009 Q1 2008
Consumer Services Telecom 22.5%
Financial Services CC/Banks 27.4%

Financial Services General

28.9%
31.4%
Conclusions
25.6%
Non-Profit/Education General 24.3%

14.3%
23.1% As the Epsilon Global Consumer Email Study
Retail Apparel
12.8%
17.6%
showed, the marketing landscape is increasingly
Retail Electronics
24.4%
22.9%
complicated, consumers are savvier than ever and
Retail General
16.3%
19.1%
email inboxes are often oversaturated. To effectively
Retail Specialty
17.3%
23.3%
execute a permission-based email marketing
Travel/Hospitality Travel Services
24.2%
program, it is important to incorporate consumer
Q1 2009 Q1 2008
preferences such as frequency of communication,
channel of communication and format as well
as behavioral and other consumer data. Today’s
consumer has limited tolerance for irrelevant
messages so targeted campaigns are clearly more
successful than the batch-and-blast approach.
Testing campaigns can ensure success and save time
and resources.

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1-800-309-0505
info@epsilon.com

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