By: Clickz

In my last column, I wrote about open rate data by message type. Today, we’re going to pull the click-through data by message type and look at that. The data comes from the Email Trends and Benchmarks report presented by Epsilon and the Email Experience Council (EEC); the Q3 2011 report was released last month.

As a quick recap:

Epsilon and the EEC have defined six message types (definitions are my own; it would be nice if the report included definitions, but it does not), which are:

• Marketing. Straight promotional email: sole purpose of the message is to drive a purchase (or in some cases, generate a lead that can drive to the purchase).
• Service. Transactional email messages, relating to a new email sign-up, an order, or some other issue involving a recent action (may and should include some marketing calls to action).
• Editorial. Messages that include content that provides value to the reader without a purchase (may and should also include some marketing calls to action).
• Acquisition. Email message to someone who doesn’t have a pre-existing relationship with the sender or whose relationship with the sender is very casual (for instance, someone that drops a business card in a jar at a trade show booth).
• Research. Email sent to gather opinions via surveys.
• Other. Anything that doesn’t fall into one of the other categories.

The vast majority of email messages sent in Q3 2011 were for marketing purposes (65.8 percent); the “other” category made up another 26.6 percent. Service emails accounted for 6.7 percent of messages, editorial, 0.6 percent; acquisition and research messages were very low contributors to volume (0.1 percent each).

OK, now onto the data. Click-through rate is defined as unique clicks (one per email address) over the quantity of email assumed delivered (calculated by removing the number of bounces from the total quantity of email sent).

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