Customer segmentation and personalization, along with better vendor selection, can help boost your e-mail marketing results.

By Reported Donna Loyle

For instance, revenue per e-mail delivered is declining, as is median order size. Moreover, open rates for offers made by retail and catalog companies were the lowest among those categories tracked by DoubleClick — 30.8 percent in the third quarter.

And clickthrough rates among retailers/catalogers declined from 8.8 percent in the third quarter of 2003, to 5.6 percent in the same quarter in 2004, for a 36.4 percent decline.