Study by Cheetah Digital shows: emails remain a key marketing tool
According to a study by Cheetah, email marketing remains one of the most effective forms of advertising. This is due in no small part to the consistently high level of acceptance of email among consumers.
Compared to the previous year, the email open rate in Germany rose by a further 1.3% to a total of 30.38%. However, email is not spared from the problem of customer engagement: the click rate in Germany fell by 1.3 percentage points year-on-year to 4.4%.
This is the result of the latest email marketing benchmark report from Cheetah Digital, for which over 17 billion emails from customer loyalty campaigns from more than 1,300 companies in Germany, France and Spain were analyzed. According to the report, Germany comes last in Europe in terms of both open and click rates, behind France (43.61% and 5.08% respectively) and Spain (37.18% and 5.28% respectively). In terms of the "click-to-open" rate, which is an indicator of recipients' willingness to respond, Germany still managed to come second (12.94%).
Deregistration rates stable - return rates down
Looking at the sectors examined, the online mail order business (25.46% and 3.92% respectively) stands out in terms of German open and click rates. The German tourism industry (17.97 or 2.4 percent), on the other hand, struggled the most with below-average performance. Across all sectors, however, the unsubscribe rates in Germany remained stable (0.18%). And the average bounce rate in Germany has also fallen further: the further decline in undelivered emails by 10% to 2.06% indicates the great importance that German marketing specialists now attach to the quality management of their databases. Over the past year, the largest number of email marketing campaigns was sent in December (14%). One in five emails was sent on a Thursday (22%).
"There is increasing talk that email marketing is no longer fit for purpose and is being displaced by channels such as social networks. Many advertisers are therefore asking themselves whether this type of marketing is still worthwhile at all. In view of the current results of the Cheetah Digital Benchmark Report, there can only be one answer: Email is and remains a powerful dialog channel for effectively reaching potential prospects," says Stéphane Baranzelli, Managing Director Europe at Cheetah Digital. "The noticeable decline in customer engagement is primarily due to the changed requirements on the customer side. Today, customers expect data-optimized and tailor-made email offers that cater to their individual needs. Emails with a clear customer focus will continue to perform at their best in the future!"
