In 2005, five billion pieces of direct mail were sent to both businesses and consumers in the UK compared to more than 3.2 billion emails*. Yet with the predicted increase of 43 per cent, the coming year could see the two media positioned on a level footing for the first time.

The report reveals that the average volume of emails rose by one third in the last quarter to over 15 million. This increase underlines email marketing’s continued effectiveness due its ability to react swiftly to market opportunities and its short production cycle.

Also, according to the report, opt-out rates are decreasing. More than half of the ESPs involved in the report have an average opt-out rate of less than 0.5 per cent for acquisition campaigns, and more than two thirds have the same rate for retention campaigns.

Richard Gibson, Chair of the Email Marketing Council Benchmarking Hub, comments: “The continued growth of email marketing reiterates its importance as an effective marketing channel - in terms of both driving current customers to websites as well as acquiring new ones.

“This positive feeling in the supplier market reinforces the confidence that client marketers have in email marketing, and we should expect to see an increase in both the number of clients using email marketing and in the average mailing volumes of existing email marketers.”

* The email benchmarking survey is completed by 75 per cent of UK Email Service Providers (ESPs) who deliver the majority of outsourced email messages to both business and consumer email accounts in the UK. ESPs surveyed include member and non-member companies. Results are self-reported using their own calculations and collected by tank!, who keep the identities of all respondents confidential before passing the anonymous data to the DMA to be aggregated and analysed.