The average open rate for emails about Industrial Manufacturing & Services is less than 18%

We often get asked by clients to rate their email marketing campaigns. Whilst each campaign is different (and we’d never aim to be “just average”), benchmarking is a very useful exercise. One of the best resources to benchmark email campaign is the annual Silverpop Email Metrics Benchmarking Study, and they’ve just released the 2013 edition.

Whilst they don’t look specifically at every B2B technology industries, they do have a category for Industrial Manufacturing & Services (“industrial”) as well as Computer Hardware, Telecom & Electronics (“computer hardware”). Some of the interesting facts from this research include:

  • The mean unique open rate in industrial is 17.8%, whilst it’s just 13.4% in computer hardware
  • Email open rates are highest in APAC – more than double the open rates in the USA and EMEA
  • In almost every sector the median is below the mean: i.e. more than 50% of campaigns have below-average performance
  • Emails in the industrial sector achieve click-to-open rates of 13%, whilst in computer hardware the mean is just 11.5%, and the median is only 7.9%
  • Hard bounces average 2% in industrial, and 3.2% in computer hardware
  • Unsubscribe rates are around 1/4 of one percent in both industries, and are pretty consistent from one geographic region to another

The full report has lots more information and is recommended reading for anyone involved in email marketing.

 

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