Study: Marketers Seeing More Engagement from Transactional Emails

According to the “2015 Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study” from Silverpop, transactional messages continue to translate into more customer engagement for marketers than broadcast emails.

Specifically, the research shows that transactional emails – those that are relevant to a customer’s previous actions – have a 72 percent open rate and 30 percent click rate.

The report also reflects that top performing brands tend to show a commitment to establishing ongoing relationships with their existing customers. Companies that created email campaigns based on a customer’s previous action, such as a recent purchase or password reset, were able to drive more engagement due to timeliness, according to the study.

The authors of the report note that B2B industries are more likely to include high-value information in the form of case studies and best practices in their emails. B2B industries also generally have higher opens-per-opener rates than B2C, according to the study. Insurance (2.7 opens), corporate services (2.4 opens), computer hardware (2 opens) and healthcare (2 opens) average the highest opens-per-opener rates.

Additionally, several B2B sectors show better averages when it comes to clicks-per-clicker.  Computer hardware (3.8 clicks), insurance (3.4 clicks) and corporate services (3.2 clicks) lead over all other industries.

“Again, as with the open and click findings, we expect richer content is driving deeper engagement, with material such as best practices, user tips and industry news supplementing or even replacing sales-focused copy,” wrote the authors of the study.

Observing Changes from 2014

Data from the “2014 Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study” from Silverpop shows exactly how the email marketing landscape has changed over the course of the year.

At the time, B2B industries were still leading the pack when it came to opens-per-opener. Computer hardware (2.23 opens), computer software (2.24 opens) and industrial manufacturing services (2.25 opens) had the top averages. These three sectors also led in clicks-per-clicker, with healthcare near the top of the list as well with an average of 1.62 clicks-per-clicker.

It is also worth noting that transactional messages were performing well, even one year ago. Silverpop researchers found that transactional messages sent by top-performing companies are opened an average of four times.

“This means any additional copy and cross-sell/upsell offers you add to your transactional message can benefit from the message’s longer shelf life,” wrote the authors of the 2014 report.