Based on a study of over nearly 750 companies representing 3,000 brands in 40 countries, the email benchmark study done by IBM, and Experian’s Q2 2016 Benchmark report , here are 7 insights for Email Marketing.

Social Media

Open rates during the holiday season are lower, making it important for retailers to increase the frequency during the holiday season. At the same time targeting email subscribers on Social Media  has a higher CTOR (Click To Open Rates). According to Experian, Targeting email subscribers based on their interest in social media can lead to high email engagement for brands. For example, welcome emails sent to subscribers who engaged via Facebook had an 11 percent higher click-to-open rate than other welcome emails from the same brand (22 percent for Facebook welcomes compared with 19.9 percent for other welcome emails).

Key Takeaway : Increase the frequency of emails during the holiday season. Target email subscribers on Social Media to achieve a higher Click To Open rate for your campaign.

Click-Through Rate

Mean click-through rates are 0.80 percentage points lower at 28.6 percent during the holiday season.

Key Takeaway : Marketers need to factor in lower click-through rates, to achieve their KPIs, despite the increased frequency of emails.

Engagement

Engagement, often called “read rate,” measures how long a recipient reads an email at three different time intervals: “read”(eight or more seconds); “skimmed” (two to less than eight seconds) and “glanced/deleted” (less than two seconds).
Overall, more than half – 53 percent of emails tracked were classified as read, followed by glanced 26 percent and skimmed 22 percent.

Key Takeaway : With high read rates, emails make for an effective engagement marketing tactic. If the goal of the brand is to engage customers then email should be in your marketing plan.

Transactional Messages

Behavior triggered emails have a better performance rate. Transactional messages have been seen to be a powerful customer contact moment and these statistics bear out the point.

Key Takeaway : Transactional messages present a new opportunity for brands to engage readers with promotional offers.

Creative Content

Email creative that has a sense of urgency built into it for Holiday campaigns saw better performance. According to Experian, use of a Countdown clock in 2015, saw a higher Click To Open Rate.  Marketing campaigns that included a dynamic countdown clock had a 41 percent higher click-to-open rate and more than double the transaction rate of other holiday mailings from the same brands.

Key Takeaway : Customize your content with tools that create a sense of urgency.

Email personalization

Personalization can help boost the performance of promotional emails. Based on data from April 2015 to March 2016, brands that included personalized subject lines experienced 27 percent higher unique click rates, 11 percent higher click-to-open rates and more than double the transaction rate compared with other promotional mailings.

Key Takeaway : Personalize your message for Holiday Season.

POS Subscribers

For the time period between April 2015 and March 2016, welcome mailings to POS subscribers had a 32 percent higher click-to-open rate than for subscribers obtained from other sources (23.2 percent for POS compared with 17.5 percent from other sources). For online customers offer a chance to subscribe to brand’s emails at the time of checkout.

Key Takeaway : Collect data at POS location that is validated and improve the quality of email data.