Business View - October 2015 17
each individual with additional value while open-
ing up new revenue opportunity for the business.
Specifically the study found that brands used email
campaigns triggered by a person’s previous action,
such as a recent purchase or the resetting of their
password, drove higher customer engagement due
to the timeliness and relevancy of these messag-
es. In fact according to the study these campaigns
(known as transactional emails) produced an open
rate of 72 percent and average click through rate of
30 percent.
For example, if 500 customers who purchased a
cruise vacation are sent a follow up email contain-
ing additional deals on related items, 360 consum-
ers would open the email with close to 110 clicking
on the link to get more detail.
“Keeping our fans around the country up to date
on the Kentucky Derby is a key component of our
digital marketing,” said Kate Ellis, Marketing Analyst
at the Kentucky Derby. “Email is vital as it allows us
to target our messages to specific levels or types of
customers, giving them each the information they
want including important upcoming news, details
about their trip to the Derby, charitable initiatives
and other special events. We can also use it to
conduct surveys about their experiences. Looking
forward email will continue remain a critical vehicle
for us to engage customers with personalized cam-
paigns that drive business success.”
Additional key findings include:
Top performing brands in the travel industry ex-
celled, with email open rates reaching upwards of
50 percent, 10 times more than their lower perform-
ing peers. Travel brands, which tend to effectively
use strong visuals and offer-heavy approaches, led
all top performers with click-through rates of just
over 15 percent.
While the travel industry soared, retail/ecommerce
missed the mark, producing some of the lowest
customer engagement rates. These low rates re-
sult from retailers that continue to rely on traditional
batch-and-blast methods which lack the personal-
ization that today’s consumer demands.
Asia-Pacific brands outperformed their counterparts
in North America and Europe on most benchmarks,
with top quartile performers achieving a nearly 50
percent open rate. This likely indicates that market-
ers in the region are capitalizing on the explosive
digital marketing growth in the area.
IBM’s Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study
is an annual global study that analyzes emails sent
by 3,000 brands in industries such as travel, retail,
IT, insurance and more. The goal of the study is for
marketers to aim beyond “average,” comparing
their campaign performances to top performers on
the benchmarks that are most important to their
business goals. With buyers constantly shifting and
new devices, such as wearables, regularly emerg-
ing, marketers are forced to change the way they
engage with their customers and stand out from
the more than 400 emails the average customer re-
ceives from brands each month.
“In an industry that’s evolving at the speed of light,
email, when leveraged in context of the custom-
er’s experiences, remains one of the most effec-
tive ways for brands to engage with the always on
consumer,” said Deepak Advani, General Manager,
IBM Commerce. “By combing email marketing
with deep analytics, marketers can now understand
their customers on entirely new levels, generating
additional insights from the digital world to deliver
meaningful experiences for each consumer at the
right place and the right time.”
