The Email is a core marketing channel for different brands of all shapes and sizes. In nearly every of the industry and the vertical imaginable. As such, the performance of the email can have a huge impact and a positive effect on the overall marketing success and the organizational growth.
Email click-to-open rates (CTOR)
Click-to-Open Ratio – The number of subscribers who have clicked a link within the email will be divided by the number of emails opened.
Average across all industries – 14.3%
1. Highest click-to-open rates by industry
2. Real Estate, Design and Construction Activities: 17.7% (an increase of 1.23% from 16.47% in 2018)
3. Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing & Hunting: 17.1% (a drop of 0.93% from 18.03% in 2018)
4. Media, Entertainment, and Publishing: 16.9% (a drop of 0.25% from 17.15% in 2018)
5. Lowest click-to-open rates by industry
6. Food and Beverage: 8.9% (10.69% in 2018)
7. Automotive and Aerospace: 9.8% (12.29% in 2018)
8. Professional Services: 9.9% (12.92% in 2018)
This benchmark often times measures the perceived success of an email campaign. Considering the immediate response that is gotten from the recipient when engaging with its content.
The main factors that can affect the click-to-open rates are:
1. Collection and utilization of the correct data for subscribers
2. Easy to access, hard to resist calls-to-action
3. Segmented and personalized data
4. Correct rendering across all devices
5. Optimized design and copy
Email unsubscribe rates
The Unsubscribe Rate – It is the Total number of people who have unsubscribed divided by the total number of emails that are sent.
Average across all industries – 0.1%
1. Highest unsubscribe rates by industry
2. 2 industry sectors shared an unsubscribe rate of 0.3%
3. Construction, Contracting, and Manufacturing: 0.3% (0.19% in 2018)
4. Logistics and Wholesale: 0.3% (0.2% in 2018)
5. Lowest unsubscribe rates by industry
5 industry sectors shared an unsubscribe rate of 0.1%
6. Consumer Packaged Goods: 0.1% (0.12% in 2018)
7. Food and Beverage: 0.1% (0.16% in 2018)
8. Media, Entertainment, and Publishing: 0.1% (0.1% in 2018)
9. Retail: 0.1% (0.12% in 2018)
10. Travel, Hospitality, and Leisure: 0.1% (0.16% in 2018)
This very important benchmark can alert the marketers to the topics, the subjects, the email designs or the templates that could lead a recipient to unsubscribe. This is a key indicator spotting a disinterested or dissatisfied subscriber.
The main factors that are affecting the unsubscribe rates are:
1. Poor audience segmentation, delivering non-relevant emails
2. Failure to build long-term engagement
3. Poor list hygiene
4. Growth and maintenance of healthy email lists
Worst days for email marketing
With statistics based on the global averages by day shown, there are also worst-performing days for sending. While this data is academically very interesting, you should also carefully consider your own audience. And then run email tests before you start blocking entire days off your campaign calendar.
1. Worst day with lowest email open rates: Saturday (17.3%)
2. Worst days with lowest click-through rates: Saturday (2.4%)
3. Worst day with lowest click-to-open rates: Tuesday (13.5%)