A great article just came out of MarketingProfs.com, offering up new insights into the average open rates, click-through rates (CTRs), and unsubscribe rates for financial service email marketing campaigns. To highlight a few important points:
- Financial services campaigns had a 22.6% average open rate. This might seem small, but it’s actually pretty good compared to other businesses (especially education, health and retail). If you’re getting open rates higher than 22%, you’re doing well.
- FIs can anticipate an average CTR of 3.5%. Again; small in theory, big in practice. You always want this number to be higher than it is, and the more focused your list, the more you should expect a high CTR.
- The average unsubscribe rate for FIs is .18%. What?! You read that correctly – that’s point-one-eight percent. It might make you think that people really love getting emails from their FI, yes? Not necessarily. See, that doesn’t account for people who see an email from their bank or credit union and drop it into trash. Nor does it account for “priority inboxing” (thanks, Gmail, for making emails even harder to get read).
So, what can we take away from all this? Well, as an industry, it would be nice if those rates reflected a highly-engaged readership. It can happen, it DOES happen. But we also shouldn’t use this to shame ourselves out of ever using email marketing again — remember, these numbers are actually pretty good, considering.
How can we raise the bar?
- Better Content/Unique Content – The short-and-sweet way to increase your open rates? Make sure it’s an email worth opening. Consider special offers that are only accessible via your email list. That way, users aren’t just users, they’re “insiders”.
- A Better Focus on Calls-to-Action – As we’ve discussed before, try out different calls-to-action – text, images, text AND images, different wordings, different positions – it all matters, and it’s all dependent.
- The “Let-Out” – Don’t hide unsubscribe links from people. If they want out, let them out. It’s only going to improve your open rate in the long-run (after all, the open rate is the number of opens divided the number of emails sent – decrease the bottom number and the percentage will increase. Simple math, yes?)
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