India's first Email Marketing Trends Report shows that Indian average open-rate is around 14-15% and  the average click-to-open rate is  10%.

The major reason for these low averages is the quality of email campaigns being conducted, according to the folks over at Juvlon, an Indian ESP. Apparently many senders in India are still using the medium for distributing what they call "posters" without intending to gauge response.

Apparently, India does not have an opt-in legislation so, this being the case, I'd say that these numbers are pretty much in line with what I'd expect them to be. The only way they can improve these averages is by focusing more on engaging readers, sending them valuable content and offers and move away from batch and blast type of campaigns.

It's a pity they only focussed on click-to-open rate in the report - I would have expected to also see the average click-through rate in this report.

You can download the Indian Email Marketing Trends Report here.

• 2011 Email Design Guidelines

  Blue Sky Factory released their 2011 Email Design Guidelines

  tags: design blog

• TripAdvisor issues warning after part of email database is stolen

  User review giant TripAdvisor has been forced to notify members of a major security breach after a “portion” of its 20 million-strong email list was stolen.

  tags: security hacking spam blog

• Statistics Sources for Email marketing

  there are a number of good options to compare email stats. The best are compilations by email marketing service providers who produce statistics across their clients’ campaigns. These are the latest sources I recommend for different locations.

  tags: statistics benchmarks blog study

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Tamara Gielen: The Relevance of Email Marketing

  I was interviewed by RedEye about why relevance is so important in email marketing. Check out the article here.

  tags: relevance blog

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• New Guide: Email Security | MailChimp Email Marketing Blog

  email security is an extremely serious matter. Hackers are jerks, but they’re not stupid, and security attacks are getting more sophisticated every day.

  The folks over at Mailchimp put together a crash course in email security to help you protect your data from attacks: why are email addresses valuable, how do attacks work and what to do if you get hacked...

  tags: blog data security spam

• Five Keys to Mobile-Ready Email Design

  how best to craft your emails so that smartphone users can read and respond to them as easily as can those viewing them on computers

  tags: blog mobile design

• Deliverability.com: What binds Email, Facebook and Twitter users? All of them hate spam.

  As marketers have moved from mass media, where we don’t “own” the audience, to permission-based direct marketing, many of us still haven’t learned how to hang on to our peeps. Often what we do runs counter to what subscribers want. Well, guess what? If you haven’t figured this out with email yet then your social strategy may too be doomed.

  tags: blog social_media spam relevancy targeting

• Al Iverson's Spam Resource: Spamhaus & URL Shortening Services

  On March 5th, Spamhaus announced a change to its DBL (Domain Block List). They're now breaking out a separate category of listings specific to spamvertized URL redirectors that appear in spam. Meaning, if URL redirectors like bit.ly show up in a lot of spam, they're likely to be listed in this new zone and are likely to be blocked by users of the Spamhaus DBL.

  tags: deliverability blog spamhaus

• Crappy Food, Jail Threat Could Lift Opens

  Want to get your email open-and-click rates up? Just serve internationally reviled food and/or have the power to put your recipients in prison.

  That’s one conclusion that could be drawn from a benchmarking study put out this week by UK messaging services provider Sign-Up.to.

  tags: blog study UK

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.