Email marketing campaigns consistently strong in the financial services sector

• Bigfoot Interactive finds a constantly evolving e-mail landscape, but no wide-reaching upward trends, in its benchmarking and analysis of key vertical e-mail campaigns.
• Collected in retention-based mailings and aggregated from Bigfoot Interactive's automated e-mail technology platform, the data encompassed the automotive, B2C, financial services, media, and retail verticals and their respective editorial, service, and promotional components.
• The overall unique open rate has exhibited a year-over-year decline, dropping from 28.7 percent in Q2 2003 to 22.3 percent in Q2 2004, largely due to changes from e-mail providers, Bigfoot's DiGuido said.
• Many leading ISPs/e-mail clients now block images by default, the occurrence of a false open reading based on a preview window," said DiGuido.
• The financial services industry remains one of the strongest categories, boasting higher deliverability and consistent click-through rates (CTR) amidst a year-over-year surge in the number of messages sent.
• Fueled by "balance transfer" enticements, Bigfoot Interactive found that the financial services vertical sent 61 percent more permission-based e-mail messages in Q2 2004 than the year prior, with 92 percent successfully delivered.
• The overall industry deliverability rate in Q2 2003 was just over 85 percent.
• A significant drop was noted quarterly, with the Q1 2004 CTR hovering at 22 percent, which DiGuido attributed to high first-quarter interest in major banks and credit card issuers' year-end statement alerts.
• Open rates for the service messaging component of the financial vertical increased 11.7 percent to 47.6 percent, while CTR dropped slightly from 17.35 percent to 16.7 percent.
• Open rates are likely skewed higher by banking and billing alerts, which recipients don't often need to click-through.
• "In addition, increasingly service alerts with intuitive subject lines as 'payment received' or 'payment due 9/29/04' require no action and therefore do not include a specific call to action," DiGuido noted.
• Looking forward to Q4 2004, DiGuido expects spikes across the retail and consumer package goods verticals as promotional and value-oriented messaging kicks into full gear for the holiday season.