Email Marketing Performance Statistics

I found an excellent database of email marketing statistics at Bronto.com. The data is from over 170 million email messages sent as a part of various email marketing campaigns.

Below is a summary of the statistics from Bronto's website. However, I recommend you check out their website which is updated regularly and has additional graphical charts of the data.

Industry	Clickthrough	Delivery Rate	Opened Rate
Advertising/Marketing	2.80%	95.10%	22.40%
E-Commerce/Retail	3.00%	90.50%	11.70%
Education	5.50%	97.30%	27.70%
Entertainment	2.30%	94.10%	18.10%
Financial Services	2.50%	93.20%	25.20%
Government	12.10%	96.50%	50.80%
Healthcare/Insurance	2.30%	96.40%	35.30%
Legal Services	5.70%	93.80%	17.90%
Manufacturing/Distribution	7.70%	94.90%	38.50%
Non-Profit/Association	9.00%	97.00%	30.70%
Publishing/Media	4.40%	95.60%	16.10%
Real Estate	3.00%	93.80%	17.90%
Services/Consulting	3.70%	86.50%	21.20%
Technology	0.90%	90.40%	10.10%
Travel/Hospitality	6.60%	96.60%	35.00%
Unknown	5.00%	95.20%	22.00%
Overall	4.30%	94.00%	19.50%

How Much of Your Website Do Users Read?

"On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely." - Jakob Nielsen (UseIt.com, 2008.)

References

Jakob Nielson. UseIt.Com. May 6, 2008. "How Little Do Users Read?"

What is the Percentage of Search Queries by Category?

The below table is a breakdown based on 9,038,794 searches and 4,926,623 clicks on AOL search (SeoBook.com, 2008).

Category	Percentage Breakdown
Misc	15.69%
Entertainment	12.60%
Shopping	10.21%
Porn	7.19%
URL	6.78%
Research	6.77%
Misspellings	6.53%
Places	6.13%
Business	6.07%
Health	5.99%
News & Society	5.85%
Computing	5.38%
Orgs & Inst	4.46%
Home & Garden	3.82%
Autos	3.46%
Sports	3.30%
Travel	3.09%
Games	2.38%
Personal Fin	1.63%
Holidays	1.63%

References

SeoBook.com. 2008. "How Much is a Top Google Ranking Worth to Your Business?"

What Percentage of Searchers are Shopping Versus Looking for Information?

The data in the below table is from research done by Bernard Jansen of Penn State. Informational queries are those which are focused on gathering information with no predetermined intent to purchase. Shopping queries are those that do reflect an intent to execute a transaction once the desired information has been found.

Search Type	Percentage Breakdown
Informational	80%
Shopping	10%
Other	10%

References

Penn State. 2008. "Determining the Informational, Navigational, and Transactional Intent of Web Queries"

How Many Purchases Originate from Organic Search versus Paid Search Ads?

At the NYC SES conference JupiterMedia stated that 5 out of 6 commercial purchases which originate from search originate from the free (or organic) side (SeoBook.com. 2008).

References

SeoBook. 2008. "Pay Per Click Clickthrough Rate SEO Stats"

What is the Click Through Rate By Ad Position?

Services like Google AdWords allow you to bid more to move your ad up in position. However, what is the improvement in ad performance by moving up to a higher position? To be able to reliably make this determination accurate statistics are needed. The below data was provided by Atlas DMT (SeoBook.com. 2008).

Google AdWords Ad Performance by Ad Position

Ad Position	Relative Click Through Rate (CTR)	Relative Impressions	Click Potential
1 (First)	100%	100%	100%
2 (Second)	77.4%	77.2%	59.8%
3 (Third)	66.6%	71.3%	47.5%
4 (Fourth)	57.4%	67.9%	39.0%
5 (Fifth)	52.9%	65.8%	34.8%
6 (Sixth)	50.2%	62.3%	31.3%
7 (Seventh)	39.7%	60.6%	24.0%
8 (Eigth)	34.3%	58.3%	20.0%
9 (Ninth)	26.0%	58.6%	15.3%
10 (Tenth)	26.3%	52.6%	13.9%

Overture Ad Performance by Ad Position

Ad Position	Relative Click Through Rate (CTR)	Relative Impressions	Click Potential
1 (First)	100%	100%	100%
2 (Second)	80.0%	97.2%	77.7%
3 (Third)	52.2%	94.5%	58.8%
4 (Fourth)	45.9%	91.2%	41.8%
5 (Fifth)	35.0%	86.2%	30.2%
6 (Sixth)	32.3%	74.3%	24.0%
7 (Seventh)	26.6%	67.7%	18.0%
8 (Eigth)	23.6%	59.5%	14.1%
9 (Ninth)	21.0%	42.9%	9.0%
10 (Tenth)	21.1%	36.8%	7.8%

References

SeoBook. 2008. "How Much is a Top Google Ranking Worth Your Business?"

What is the Click Through Rate of Each Position in Search Results?

Have you ever wondered how many clicks the first search results gets versus the second, third, fourth, etc? The below table is a breakdown based on 9,038,794 searches and 4,926,623 clicks on AOL search (SeoBook.com, 2008). As of this statistic, all major search engine results pages, including Google's, look and act roughly the same. Thus, these statistics should apply to any search engine.

Result Position	Percent of Clicks	Relative to 1st Position
1 (First)	42.13%	n/a
2 (Second)	11.90%	3.5x less
3 (Third)	8.50%	4.9x less
4 (Fourth)	6.06%	6.9x less
5 (Fifth)	4.92%	8.5x less
6 (Sixth)	4.05%	10.4x less
7 (Seventh)	3.41%	12.3x less
8 (Eigth)	3.01%	14.0x less
9 (Ninth)	2.85%	14.8x less
10 (Tenth)	2.99%	14.1x less
Total	89.82%

References

SeoBook.com. 2008. "How Much is a Top Google Ranking Worth to Your Business?"

What is a Good Bounce Rate?

The average website has a bounce rate between 40% - 60% (Google, 2008.).

• Any bounce rate below 50% is considered great.
• A bounce rate below 40% is excellent.
• A bounce rate between 60% and 75% is considered okay, but could improve.
• A bounce rate above 75% is low and it may be a worthwhile investment to improve this number.

References

Google. 2008. "Google University - Bounce Rate: The Simply Powerful Metric"

Why Did I Add a Statistics Section to this Website?

Are you tired of reading the "expert" analysis of others?

Sometimes I regret the fact that I'm adding my voice to the cacophony of noisy opinions on the internet. There are only so many opinions we can read and process before it all becomes useless noise. On the other hand, doing analysis for ourselves is a valuable exercise and a requirement to run a successful company of any form.

The statistics on this section of the website are provided to enable you to do your own analysis.

Doing a successful analysis requires access to accurate data. My goal is to make this website a treasure trove of accurate and free data and statistics about websites in general and online characteristics of your industry.

I hope this helps you to do more of your own analysis and to listen to all of us so-called pundits a little less.

Best,

Ayo Ijidakinro
Owner and Operator
Ayos Website Design

Research based web strategy consulting.