Thankfully MarketingSherpa, a leading online marketing agency has come up with a survey report that more or less provides an authoritative answer to this question, both for B2C (business to consumer) and B2B (business to business) environment.

The survey titled MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing Benchmark Survey revealed that 25% recipients in B2C segment open e-mail newsletter, 14% of the total recipients click on the link given inside it, and 4% of them act upon them.

The scene does not look much different in B2B setting as well. Newsletter open-rate in B2B setting is 23%, which is mere 2% less than that of B2C segment; newsletter clickthrough –rate is 11%, which is 3% less than that of B2C segment; and 3% of the total recipients in B2b market works upon it, which is mere 1% less than B2C segment. (See image).

If we compare the conversion rate of email newsletter with that of direct mailers, which is at best 1-2%, then we will see how effective the medium is.

Well, if you don’t then it is high time to start using sponsored forum posts to promote your business. In a study conducted by PostRelease, it was found that sponsored forum posts in targeted online forum increases the response rate by more than 100% one year after the paid forum posts campaign has ended provided they are:

• Marked as advertisement, and
• They are posted in the targeted online forums

The study has recorded the click-through rate of sponsored forum posts at various point after the posts has been made. The results were as follow:

• The click through rate increase by 40% after 60 days of a sponsored forum post appearance.
• The click through rate increase by 77% after 180 days of a sponsored forum post appearance.
• The click through rate increase by 103.6% after 360 days of a sponsored forum post appearance.

The read rate of the sponsored posts also saw a rise during the same time frame, but it did not increased as much as did the click-through rate. The read rate results were as follow:

• The read rate increase by 28.8% after 60 days of a sponsored forum post appearance.
• The click through rate increase by 49.2% after 180 days of a sponsored forum post appearance.
• The click through rate increase by 60.6% after 360 days of a sponsored forum post appearance.

Thus, I believe marking advertisement on sponsored forum posts are after all not all that bad.