Spam sham

Spending and the stock market aren't the only things falling these days.

Worldwide, fewer and fewer consumers are bothering to open commercial emails. This from a study by eMail list management firm MailerMailer.

Their study reveals that the typical e-mail open rate for targeted marketing messages declined to 13.20% in the first half of this year, compared with 16.11% in the first half of last year. Click-through numbers fell too, from 3.18% in the first half of '07 to 2.73% in the first half of '08.

The data collected by MailerMailer indicated that the numbers between industries differed, for example, finance, government, telecom and even spiritual-oriented email messages having more success than others.
Supporting reports from other earlier surveys, pithy subject lines (<35 characters) performed better than longer subject headings, with an open rate of 19.6% and a 3.1% click-through rate versus 14.8% and a click-through rate of only 1.9%.

None of this slow down has apparently caught up with the marketing plans of most retailers, where SEO and email remain tops of their online marketing planning efforts. I believe that this is as due to marketing's continued search for a measureable and accountable media as emails' continued, though decreasing, effectiveness.

It has been reported that one hit out of a million emails (that's a .000001% click-through rate) makes the effort worth it to fraudulent spammers, so by comparison, even a 2.73% click-through rate is likely to remain a prize bird among competing turkeys this holiday advertising season.