There are a few comments to CTR and delivery rates in e-mail marketing.

Taking into consideration http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007192 and http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=110936, it seems that there’s no actual references in general data. The two researches show a big gap (almost 20%) in the delivery rates, which is not understandable.
One should assume that Epsilon was using brand new mailing lists, while Return Path was using scarcely updated lists. 20% is know as the percentage of addresses that become obsolete with one year time. If that’s not the case, then maybe one of the two research firms needs to change parameters or origins.

There’s one more detail which I always didn’t understand, at least when I was in Europe.
All my mailings had an average of 30% as open rate and a 8/10% as click-through rate. And I couldn’t understand how my results were always above all the general statistics … that’s because I don’t presume I’m such a DM guru.
Now that I’m in the US all my statistics returned normal: independently from the message, its tone or content, my result seems an exact replica of those shown by the two above researches.

My final comment is very simple.
As DM had such an evolution in the US, US customers deal much more critically with incoming messages. Those could be more friendly, even more naïve if compared to the seriousness of European copybodies. But the maturity and the higher experience in dealing with a much more intense amount of targeted communication puts the marketer in a more challenging position towards its public.
On the other hand European people is still “new” to such a communication bombardment: they always complain about the huge inbox but they read and interact more.

At the end one could say: if DM is effective in the US (where response rates are lower), no European marketer should complain if its DM campaign didn’t reach the expected goals.
Moreover, one should come here, and find out how any targeted communication is often a start of a thick conversation (quite impossible elsewhere) and how response times are even more different (being quicker) and meaningful.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1005981&src=article1_newsltr

Depending on who is being targeted, when, and at which stage of the consumer buying process, a range of media could be considered most effective.

Rispetto ai destinatari, a quando raggiungerli, a quale stadio per processo di vendita, un insieme di mezzi può risultare il più efficace.