This study aims to measure the effectiveness of e-marketing campaigns in 2014 in the Spanish, French and German markets. By analysing 17 billion emails sent to more than 900 clients, Experian's email marketing benchmark has become a reference within the sector. In this post, beyond commenting on the most relevant results of the study, we will make a comparison with previous years to understand how this sector is evolving in different countries.
Before starting, let's remember the meaning of some Email Marketing metrics that appear in the tables so that there is no doubt about the data they provide:
Opens : This metric indicates the percentage of unique opens
Openers : This metric indicates the percentage of unique users who have opened at least one email in a campaign and is the figure we consider to obtain the opening rate.
Average number of opens per opener : % unique opens / % unique users who have opened at least one email
Clickers : This metric indicates the unique users who have clicked at least once after opening an email.
Reactivity : This metric indicates the degree of interest at&t email list in the content among an audience (clickers per 100 openers)
As regards the opening rate of the different countries, France continues to hold the top spot, increasing the percentage of email openings even more (from 38% to 41%), followed by Germany, which has also seen a significant improvement (from 25% to 28%) and Spain, which remains stable with an opening rate of 25%. Thus, two of the three countries have increased the opening rate of their e-marketing campaigns and this shows the improvements that are taking place in the sector.
Below we will show you the opening rate by sector in the different countries and from this we will draw some conclusions. We will only look at the “Openers” column, which corresponds to the opening rate, and at the countries France and Spain, which are the data that we are interested in studying in detail.
2013
country_openings
Source: Experian Marketing Services
Firstly, in Spain the sector with the highest opening rate during 2014 was clearly the “Banking/Insurance” sector with 27.22%. The evolution of this sector is gradually manifested with an opening rate in 2013 of 25.56%. Secondly, we find the “Non-profit organisations” sector which has increased its opening rate by 64% compared to the previous year. Therefore, we are looking at the sector that has seen the most evolution from one year to the next (from 15.71% to 25.90%). Although these two sectors predominate, the difference with respect to the others is not very great. The sector with the worst opening rate is “Press and media”, reducing its opening rate by 6 points compared to 2013 (from 17.70% to 11.32%).
In France, the “Banking/Insurance” sector also stands out as the one with the highest opening rate in the period with 29.65%, remaining in first place, the same as in 2013. The Email Marketing opening rate in this country has increased, but the sectors remain more or less in the same order as the previous year, with no significant variation other than in the “Luxury” sector, which has experienced a considerable increase compared to the previous year, going from an opening rate of 23.32% to 28.74%, placing it in second place.
This data can provide us with sociodemographic information about each of the countries. In both Spain and France, the opening rate is higher when it comes to banks and insurance.
It is essential that users open our emails, but if they do not click or are not interested in what they find in them, it is useless. Below we will talk about the average clicker rate and clicks by sector and country, to find out which topics interest our users more or less.
2014
Click-through rate by sector
Source: Experian Marketing Services
As we have already mentioned, in Spain the emails that are opened the most are those related to “Banking/Insurance”. However, non-profit organisations are the ones that have the highest percentage in terms of clicks and clickers. The same is true in France, as far as clicks and clickers are concerned we leave aside the “Banking/Insurance” sector since the topics that attract the most attention are those of the “Tourism/Leisure” sector.
Finally, it is important to take into account the Reactivity Rate of the countries of Spain and France, which have experienced a lower reactivity rate compared to the previous year. On the one hand, France has gone from 18.27% to 15.01% and Spain from 18.58% to 16.58%. This is mainly due to the stability of the clicker rate due to the increase in the opener rate. Below you can see what the percentage is by sector for each of the two countries in the respective years.
