ClickZ: Study: Financial Services Strongest Sector for E-Mail

A Bigfoot study of email response rates showed that, with some notable exceptions, email marketing is getting tougher. The unique open rate - a measure of how many individuals looked at a commercial email sent to them - declined further from 28.7 percent in the second quarter of 2003 to 22.3 percent in the second quarter of 2004. The financial category came out well, however, showing a rise in open rates from just over a third of emails sent to just under half in Q2 2004. This trend, likely inspired by "transfer balance" offers, came even in the face of a 61 percent rise in mailings.