What are the Average Direct Marketing & Advertising Media Response Rates & Benchmarks.

We are often asked the question – “What is a good response rate or benchmark for a particular marketing or advertising medium?” Providing answers usually came from rough ideas, a quick online search or sometimes from an article we have read a number of years back.

So in an effort to provide an easily accessible answer to these questions and see how each method stacks up against each other, we have trawled through our resources, read a lot of articles (all referenced below) and come up with the below quick reference guide for average response and conversion rates for key direct and brand awareness mediums.

Some things to note about this information:

• All figures are sourced from various locations and not a single source of data, the data varies in reliability and background information regarding how it was obtained.
• Use these figures as a rough guide not a super accurate resource. Every industry and brand will be different.
• Best results are always achieved with regular, ongoing promotion of your brand through these medium, building a successful brand is a marathon, not a sprint, decisions to purchase a product or service often require multiple exposures to your brand message to establish trust and familiarity.
• Highly targeted mediums such as social media and search allow very fine targeting of ads compared to the seemly poor performance (based on this data anyway) of the broad approaches like TV & radio. It should be considered before making a judgment, that one might be hitting 1000 highly targeted consumers, whereas the other is hitting say 100,000 of the general population, in a campaign where the goal is to build brand awareness the later may be more appropriate.

And without further ado… here is our finding

The above data was sourced from multiple reports, all of which are expanded on and referenced in the sections below.

Email Marketing

Email direct marketing consists of both email newsletter and direct action pieces sent to a subscriber list your company maintains or to a purchased list source from one of the many list organisations.

Key Points:

• Average Open Rate: 15-20%
• Average Click Rate: 1-2%

Having a good response rate in email marketing often depends on how well your list is maintained and how you build it. A list which users have opted into and provides good content at just the right frequency will provide best results.

The above data was sourced from MailChimp Email Benchmark Report which was updated in October 2016.

More Information:

• MailChimp Email Marketing Benchmarks Report
• Campaign Monitor Statistics Report

Social Media

When referring to social media, it is specifically those sites that allow ads or promoted posts and not organically shared content or posts.

Facebook

Key Points:

• Average Click through rate: 0.34%
• Average cost per click $0.80

The above data was sourced from SalesForce Facebook Advertising Performance by Quarter: All Industries (APAC: AUS)

More Information:

• Salesforce Facebook Advertising Performance Report

Direct Mail

Direct mail covers any type of printed marketing material distributed to consumers or businesses via mailbox or letterbox drop. The list may be an in-house list which your company maintains, a purchased list, say farmers in NSW for example or a letterbox drop for a specific region.

Research from Australia Post indicates that over 99% of people open mail, 60% read it thoroughly and a further 39% scan it for items of interest.

Key points

• Average response rate for in-house lists 4.14%
• Average response rate for purchased lists 1.52%
• Oversized envelope has the best response rate of 5%

The above data was sourced from Direct Marketing Association 2014 Combined

More Information

• Direct Media Response Rate, CPA and ROI Benchmarks
• AustPost Direct Mail

Search / Online

Google’s paid advertising platform, Adwords covers both keyword based search ads and also display ads through their large network of advertiser websites.

Search

Search ads are those shown at the top and bottom of Google’s search results pages and on various partner websites.

Key Points:

• The average click-through rate 1.91%.
• The average cost per click is $2.32.
• The average conversion rate is 2.70%.

The above data was sourced from Wordstream Google AdWords Benchmarks blog post.

Display Ads

Display ads are static visual or often animated banner ads shown either within website content or on video sites such as Youtube.

Key Points:

• The average click-through rate is 0.35%.
• The average cost per click is $0.58.
• The average conversion rate is 0.89%.

The above data was sourced from Wordstream Google AdWords Benchmarks blog post.

More Information:

• Google AdWords Benchmarks for YOUR Industry
• Google AdWords average conversion rates by industry

Major Media

Major traditional media formats include radio, television, newspapers and magazines.

This section was by far the most difficult to source any reliable statistics. Each of these mediums do operate industry associations, all of which claim their own medium is the best, often with vast statistical reports that demonstrate all sorts of figures that are very interesting. In all formats any sort of average response rate, or an easy to understand return on investment figure was omitted.

More Information

• DMA Response Rates from 2005
• Commerical Radio Australia Statistics
• ThinkTV Reports