by Ron Daly

When I give presentations about the ARB, our super-powered email delivery system, I often include statistics about open rates. If the name didn't give it away, open rates refer to the number of emails sent as part of an email campaign that were opened by the recipients. Sometimes, people are stunned. Other times they're underwhelmed. The difference is in what you know about open rates.

According to the MarketingSherpa benchmark guide for 2008, your typical B-to-C email open rate is going to average at 27%. For B-to-B, expect that to be about 20%. Getting more specific, we look at breakdowns by industry, with banking/finance leading the pack at 28.1% open rate.

I'm proud to say that our campaigns are hitting those numbers - and often times moreso. Our "Do you want fries with that" webinar shares details about a campaign that had a 35% open rate. Click here to sign up for our upcoming webinar dates.

Then there's when the messages are being opened. Does it matter? You'd better believe it. You're going to get more opens and a higher click-through rate (number of links in your email clicked) on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday than other days of the week. That's not to say that if your campaign flies out over the weekend that it won't get opened...it just won't be opened right away.

Hopefully this clears the fog a little bit for you. To learn more, contact us at info@digitalmailer.com