Declining Open Rates – A detailed analysis from DoubleClick

DoubleClick has released their Q2 2005 Email Trend Report. In this report, DoubleClick notes that the average open rate has declined for five straight quarters. They looked at several factors that could be attributed to this decline.

• Increased adoption of ISP technology developed to shield users from spam and questionable content has led to images being blocked by default. Since an one-pixel images needs to be rendered to track open rates, image blocking has had an impact on declining open rates.
• New addresses tend to outperform older addresses, so when new addresses become a smaller percentage of a marketer’s overall file it puts a natural downward pressure on open rates.
• Consumers are growing more selective in what they choose to open. This selective opening does not mean that email messages are not valued, but rather that consumers will respond when they are “in market” for a particular product or service offering.
  

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