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Posts Tagged ‘email open rate stats’

Compare Your Email Stats To Industry Benchmarks

Saturday, June 21st, 2008

Ever looked at your email open rate, and wondered “how do I compare to others in my industry?”

We just added that information to MailChimp’s email marketing reports.

Now, when you open up your email campaign’s stats, you can compare your open rate, click rate, and bounce rate to other companies in your industry (we analyzed over 170 million emails to get this information):

Click the screenshot to zoom in:

Email Marketing Benchmarks in MailChimp

The nice thing is we also show you how you compare to your own average (for that list), so you can see if your campaigns are improving or not. In the email campaign report above, my campaign got a 47.5% open rate, which is way better than the IT/Technology industry’s average open rate of 19.6%. But before I go asking my boss for a raise, I can see that my open rate actually fell from my normal average of 50.4%. Uh-oh. Maybe it was my subject line, or the day I sent my email, or the timing. Time to start optimizing!

Does “FREE” Make People Open Your Emails?

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

I recently blogged about some interesting A/B Split data that I’ve been sifting through for a report we’re working on.

Thought I’d post another interesting observation from a handful of campaigns that ran A/B Split Tests on their subject lines (company names disguised as “Acme”). The first 4 are from the same company, sending emails for 4 different web properties that they run…

Winning Subject Line (by open rate) Losing Subject Line
Acme News Update Free Shipping Until Valentine’s Day
Acme Store News Free Shipping Until Valentine’s Day
Acme Store News Free Shipping Until Valentine’s Day
Acme: Store Update Free Shipping Until Valentine’s Day
20% OFF book bundles, FREE book raffle, NEW books NEW books, FREE book raffle, 20% OFF book bundles
Free Dinner! Save Time and Money!
ACME January “100 Dairy Free” Book Give Away Acme January Newsletter
Hurry! Shipping is free through Wednesday Free Shipping Through Wednesday
The Perfect Valentine’s Day from James Free! Valentine’s Dilemma? We’ve Got Great Gift Ideas!
Take the Girlfriends on vacation! Free Food! Free Assembly!
Acme Brain Push Up Free Acme Ending
Acme trial expiring: Keep your brain sharp Free Acme Ending
Free Acme Ending Play Great Brain Games

In almost all the examples above, the subject line with “free” had a lower open rate. So should you avoid the word “FREE” in your subject line? In my opinion, don’t use “free” if it detracts from relevance. If you replace your company name with “free” or if you remove the urgency with “free,” your open rate is going to suffer.

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