Marketers registered high order per e-mail delivered rates and near-record click-to-purchase conversion rates, according to a DoubleClick e-mail trend report for the fourth quarter of 2004.
The report, released yesterday, also said the rate of revenue per e-mail delivered rose despite a fall in average order numbers. Orders per e-mail delivered, at 0.35 percent, were at an all-time high. It was much higher than the prior higher rate seen in the first and second quarters of 2003 — 0.3 percent.
Click-to-purchase conversions, at 4.8 percent, were up from 4.2 percent in fourth-quarter 2003 and nearly on par with the all-time high of 4.9 percent in fourth-quarter 2002.
The numbers are for retail and catalog customers that track purchase activity through DoubleClick's DARTmail.
Revenue per delivered e-mail also remained steady, with retail and catalog marketers recording 26 cents per e-mail delivered in fourth-quarter 2004.
“Combined with the average order size, which has slowly declined over the same time period, these results suggest a change in how e-mail marketing is driving online sales,” the DoubleClick report said. “Although more people are purchasing as a result of an e-mail offer, they are purchasing smaller ticket items.
“This suggests that e-mail-driven purchasing has expanded to include nearly all product categories, and when people are in [the] market for an item, they are indeed converting,” DoubleClick said. “Despite the decline in average order size, the consistency of the revenue-per-e-mail delivered further underscores the profitability of the e-mail marketing medium.”
