New email marketing figures have raised serious questions over the authenticity of open rates as a measurement of success with fears that Apple’s new email privacy policy is wreaking havoc with campaign results.
According to the DMA’s Email Benchmarking Report 2023, backed by Deployteq, which reveal a 13% jump in open rates, reaching a high of 31.8%, inflated by bot accounts taking advantage of a change in Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) policy, marking emails as ‘open’ as soon as they are delivered to the recipient’s inbox.
Deployteq, a leading self-service marketing automation provider, in partnership with the DMA and the DMA Email Council, collected direct supply-side performance data from 2022, establishing key email performance metrics on which brand campaigns can be benchmarked.
However, the inflated open rate due to the MPP has raised questions over the accuracy of open rate as a true measurement of campaign effectiveness, calling for marketers to explore new metrics to evaluate success.
Data-driven measurement has become even more important with the cost-of-living crisis limiting consumer spending power, making it harder for marketers to drive a direct response.
Deployteq marketing director Pauline Buil said: “The current landscape of email marketing presents an intriguing mix of successes and challenges. Marketers must recognise the limitations of open rate as a sole metric and focus on developing robust strategies to drive meaningful engagement. Additionally, with the upcoming Apple Link policy, it becomes crucial for marketing departments to explore other innovative measurement techniques that accurately capture the impact of their campaigns.
“Email isn’t just about driving sales, it is about providing value to customers and delivering brand awareness, so marketers must find an accurate way to measure the success of their outreach, ensuring consumers are catered to during the uncertain economic situation.”
And DMA planning and insight director Ian Gibbs reckons that while click-through-rates have dipped since two years ago, this performance is strong against the overall back drop of performance marketing effectiveness at the moment.
He added: “In the face of declining consumer demand during the cost-of-living crisis, performance marketers are finding that response is harder and harder to come by as reported in the DMA’s CMO Measurement Toolkit earlier this year. A stable performance from email against this backdrop should give marketers confidence that the channel can help them drive results in tough times.”
Nearly all sectors observed a year-on-year increase in delivery rates. Retail reached new highs of 98.9% in 2022, and the finance sector, after years of low deliverability, experienced a positive increase to 98.8%.
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