Email Member Acquisition and Renewal Metrics

I recently reviewed a Silverpop study of for-profit promotions average click-thru and open rates.

But what about click-thru and open rates for membership acquisition and renewals?

In 2009, in three acquisition campaigns for three different clients, we sent out over 130,000 emails. Open rates ranged from 16% to 18.77%, with click-thru rates ranging from 3.49% to 5.66%.

Obviously the sample size is still small. But, what is interesting is how closely the open rates and the click-thru rates are clustered -- especially given the divergence of markets that received these emails. This gives me confidence that we might actually be seeing a trend.

Interestingly, when looking at renewals, I'm seeing an open rate of almost 30% and a click thru rate of almost 18%. In comparison to the acquisition open and click-thru rates this makes perfect sense.

This is the first step in reporting this data. I welcome anybody to report their responses as well.