E-mail open rates drop at end of 2007: MailerMailer report

Seventy-four percent of the consumers who open an e-mail message do so within the first 24 hours, and in 48 hours that number rises to 83%, according to a new report by e-mail marketing firm MailerMailer.

The study, titled Email Marketing Metrics Report, measured more than 300 million e-mail messages sent by 3,200 of its e-mail clients across 21 different industries between July 1 and December 31, 2007.

Interestingly, the report also found that e-mail open rates continue to decline at a higher rate than previous years. The overall unique open rate for e-mails sent by MailerMailer customers in the last six months of 2007 declined more than 2%, from 16.11% at the beginning of 2007, to 13.98% during the last six months of 2007. According to the report, this period's drop was “possibly due to the proliferation of e-mails being viewed on handheld devices.”

However, click rates were not affected as strongly as open rates. Click rates for the last half of 2007 reached 2.9%, coming down only slightly from 3.18% in the first half of 2007.

Banking and finance saw the highest open rates, rising from 6.52% in the first half of the year to 6.98% in the second half.