eDataSource, the leading provider of competitive intelligence data, has released a ranking of effective email marketing based on the efforts of the Internet Retailer top 500 e-retailers. Specifically, EDS has ranked the top 10 retail chain e-retailers with the highest 2010 web sales reported by Internet Retailer. eDataSource has ranked these brands on their email marketing by how many active recipients they currently have.
| Ranking of Top Retail Chains |
| Top 10 Retail Chain Merchants | Active Recipients |
1 | Walmart.com | 3,029,191 |
2 | Staples Inc. | 1,926,072 |
3 | Best Buy Co. | 1,881,404 |
4 | Victoria’s Secret | 1,634,364 |
5 | Sears Holdings Corp. | 1,472,556 |
6 | Costco Wholesale Corp | 1,342,880 |
7 | Macy’s Inc. | 1,071,988 |
8 | Office Depot | 514,767 |
9 | OfficeMax Inc. | 512,624 |
10 | W.W. Grainger Inc. | - |
The results place Walmart.com & Staples Inc. at #1 and #2 based on EDS’s calculation of active recipients in the last 30 days. The calculation is based on estimated overall reach and open rate data monitored by EDS Analyst. As you can see in the chart below, both of these brands are ranked in the top 3 of Internet Retailers Top 10 Retail Chains, based on 2010 web sales.
At EDS, we pride ourselves on providing very statistically correct data. At this time the activity level at W.W. Grainger has not been high enough to provide us with a large enough data sample to report an open rate which is why sample the Active Recipients number is not displayed. Although the brand has 1.8B web sales for 2010 according to Internet Retailer, W.W. Grainger doesn’t seem to be proactively promoting their products by email. Therefore, W.W. Grainger defaults to the 10th place for this ranking.
| Data Collected by EDS Analyst |
Defining the monitored performance data used for the ranking:
- Overall Reach = total delivered email list for a particular brand based on the largest detected deployment in a specific timeframe. For instance, the total number of unique recipients of Staples’ emails is estimated at 19.98M.
- Open Rates = emails opened / emails delivered. They are calculated percentages of how many emails were opened out of all of the emails that were delivered to/received by users. Each unique email is monitored for a 7-day period as most emails are opened within the first 24 hours.
- Active recipients = overall reach for a brand X open rate for the same brand. This is an average of how many of the total recipients (reach) were active (opened the email).
**Source: Internet Retailer 2011: Top Retail Chain Merchants
eDataSource, the leading provider of email competitive intelligence data, has released a ranking of effective email marketing based on the data provided by their flagship product, EDS Analyst. This report presents the top 15 e-retailers in the Fashion & Apparel market sector for overall reach in the past 30 days.
Based on Internet Retailer’s 2011 Edition Top 500 Overview, merchandising categories were ranked by growth in web sales from 2009 to 2010. The Apparel Category has seen a substantial growth of 19.29%, among the top 5 categories based on ecommerce sales growth.
Based on analysis of Internet Retailer 500 Companies, it is evident that there is a linear correlation to being a top e-retailer with high web sales and increased growth and having a large reach. Being a top e-retailer is ranked in Internet Retailer’s Top 500 Guide, 2011 Edition is based on factors such as 2010’s web sales as a percentage of 2010’s total sales and this percentage’s growth from 2009. The overall reach data is ranked with the usage of the performance data monitored by EDS Analyst.
Within the top 15 ranked fashion and apparel e-retailers over the last 30 days by eDataSource, six also appear in Internet Retailer’s Top 100 e-retailers ranking. These e-retailers include Victoria’s Secret, The Gap, J. Crew, Ralph Lauren, Eddie Bauer, and Coldwater Creek. Ranked at #5 and #7 in this report, both Express and Ralph Lauren appear in Internet Retailers Top 500 Guide in the fastest-growing e-retailers ranking for 2011. Express Inc. is ranked #20 fasting growing e-retailer in the Top 500 Guide, 2011 Edition with 2010 web sales of $147.5 million and 55.26% growth. It was also listed as a fastest growing e-retailer in the Top 500 Guide, 2010 Edition. Ralph Lauren LLC is ranked #28 fastest growing e-retailer with 2010 web sales of $300 million and 50% growth. Therefore, this rankings report compiled with EDS Analyst reach and inbox placement data shows the correlation of having high performance in these areas and being a top e-retailer.
As you can see from the report, other performance data is provided by EDS Analyst including the subject line, reach, inbox placement, and open rate of email campaigns that are monitored, stored, and analyzed by the tool. Based on this data, analysis can be as to what your competitors are doing right, doing wrong and anywhere in between.
Since 2003, eDataSource has consistently and effectively provided competitive intelligence for digital marketing messaging. Our EDS Analyst platform has become an invaluable source of data and analytics for our clients. EDS is working tirelessly to enhance the platform and increase the amount of data that is monitored and analyzed every day.
| On July 1st, 2011, eDataSource launched its newest feature for providing data and analytics: open rates. As an industry standard, this metric is generally considered to be a measure of how many people on an email list open or view a particular email campaign delivered to their inboxes. |  |
Open rates should act as your guide for knowing where you stand and as a way of measuring the trends on your email campaigns – speaking to the quality of your lists, recipient loyalty and the effectiveness of a campaign.
Now with this new addition to EDS Analyst, you can benchmark rates against your competition.
For the overall email market, Harte-Hanks Postfuture Index™ 2009-2010 found that open rates averaged 17% for 2010, down from a 2009 average of 26%. Why? With EDS Analyst, comparisons over time, between companies, and across segments can be analyzed using the tool that now includes open rates to determine the reasons for increases/decreases among different email campaigns. Of course the core benefit here is not just to check your own open rates but, to gain access to your competitors’ rates as well.
Are you ready to find out where your company lies vs. your competition? Are you above or below the 17% benchmark? Where are you relative to your competitors and others in similar market segments? Who is achieving a higher open rate and what do their campaigns look like? Does this user interaction correlate to the website traffic they are receiving?
eDataSource can help answer these questions with new open rate data. It just might be the key to the success for your next email campaign or may even open the doorway to a long-term revelation for all of your campaigns!
Check out the press release to read more about this exciting time for eDataSource.
The open rates feature will be available to all eDataSource subscribers as part of the EDS Analyst package. Please contact sales at 1.800.761.6580 or sign up for a demo.
Companies across all industries are using social media to create buzz and awareness and to generate higher levels of web reach and traffic.
 | Quick Tip for Brands - the social media world is competitive and getting increasingly crowded – include a link back to your brand’s website in Twitter tweets and Facebook posts to achieve greater web reach and increased traffic to your website |
eDataSource is presently following nearly 6,000 brands on Twitter and over 4,000 on Facebook. With the use of EDS Analyst, a leading competitive intelligence tool, social media campaigns are constantly being monitored and data is being compiled. Through analysis of EDS Analyst data for the last 30 days, it can be surmised that two of the top brands based on high levels of Facebook use, Twitter use, and web reach are MTV and VH1.
 | The data shows that the main social media vehicle that these brands utilize is Twitter, followed by Facebook. Both MTV and VH1 generally have success with their tweets being retweeted by other people that are following the brands on Twitter. |
 | · Over 1.5M followers on Twitter · About 40 times as many retweets over last 30 days as there were tweets |
Reach is much more than just a brand’s Twitter followers. Tweets get retweeted!
We noticed that June 6th had a lot of social media activity for MTV. On this day the most Facebook posts and
Twitter tweets had been made within the last 30 days. This directly paralleled with their web reach per million.
From a sample of 1 million Internet users, 4,120 people visited mtv.com that day. The Facebook posts and Twitter tweets that generated the most likes, comments, and retweets on this day were about a sneak peek for 'Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Part 2' and watching the new ‘Breaking Dawn’ trailer.
 | · Over 225,000 followers on Twitter · About 10 times as many retweets over last 30 days as there were tweets |
May 26 & 27th were high Facebook and Twitter volume days for VH1. This resulted in the largest web reach monitored within the last 30 days for vh1.com to be on May 30th, a few days after VH1 made substantial social media efforts. Many of the posts and tweets had to do with famous music artists and ‘American Idol’ appeared multiple times.
After all, the buzz starts with followers! Once a brand is followed by many, they then can have their tweets being retweeted by many, and in turn reach more people that will visit their website.
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