IAB: Results of the benchmark on e-mail marketing in Belgium

published on 14/10/2010,

updated on 12/06/2023

We talked about it a few weeks ago, the IAB e-mail marketing task force presented its second annual benchmark.

But what does this benchmark say?

In general, it is not not in great shape. You can discover a general decline in performance of e-mail marketing in Belgium. On all indicators, a decrease of one to two percent can be noted.

Since I don't want to reveal the figures in the benchmark emailI had some fun calculating the reactivity rate (click rate divided by open rate) to give you an idea. This reactivity rate has not been calculated by the authors of the benchmark:

FR 2010 : 24,25%
FR 2009 : 28,13%
NL 2010 : 28,94%
NL 2009 : 33,97%

This reaction rate largely accentuates the decline that we could already see on the other indicators. What is also classic for Belgium is the less good performance of emailings among French speakers than among Dutch speakers.

And in the B2B world?

Let's get back to our reaction rate:

B2B : 12,56%
B2C : 29,47%
Average: 27.76%

While the average opening rate in B2B and B2C is relatively similar, the Click-through rate in B2B is really very lowwhich dramatically decreases its reaction rate. We can also note (but it is classic) that the B2B bounce rate is much higher than that of B2C.

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And by sector of activity?

If we compare the different industries, we can obviously see that the performance is down. On the other hand, the reactivity rate remains relatively stable.

This is true, except in two specific sectors, "Finance & Insurance" and "Telecom & IT". The first one is strongly up while the second one is suffering a very heavy fall.

Reaction rate Finance & Insurance

2009 : 8,48%
2010 : 16,83%

Telecom & It response rate

2009 : 18,29%
2010 : 8,72%

Conclusion

In a more general way, the trends of email marketing in Belgium are in the same direction lineage than what we can see elsewhere. The deliverability is decreasing and it brings with it all the other indicators.

Find the full benchmark on the IAB website (for IAB members only)

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The author

Jonathan Loriaux

I've been involved in email marketing for over ten years, and my career path began on the technical side (email campaign integration) before moving on to sales (as an eCRM expert) and finally marketing consultancy. For the past 9 years, I've been the author of the Badsender.com blog. Emailing isn't just an expertise, it's truly become my passion, which is why Badsender is now my main activity, with the creation of an emailing consulting business linked to the site.

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