Benchmark report reveals effectiveness of marketing emails
Email is still among the most popular ways of delivering marketing messages to customers, but it can be hard to measure how well it works.
A new study from delivery platform SendGrid measures the engagement numbers for the average percentage of male and female recipients, the percentage of emails that are opened on mobile and non-mobile devices, open rates, click rate, click-to-open rates and monthly send rates across 10 industries.
The report combines engagement statistics across all senders, establishing the benchmarks for the average monthly send rate of 9.8 emails with a unique open rate of 14.2 percent, open rate of 27.3 percent, unique click rate of 1.9 percent, click rate of 2.8 percent and unique click/open rate of 13.6 percent.
Retail emails have the highest click-to-open rate at 30.3 percent. This may signal that recipients are interested in seeing more products, or in new product releases and offers. Retail messages are more likely to be opened on mobile devices too, emphasising that senders need to make their message mobile friendly.
Daily deal and coupon emails by contrast have a high monthly send rate but a click rate of only 2.4 percent and click-to-open of 13.1 percent. Female recipients are much more likely to open these than males, however.
"According to the Direct Marketing Association, email remains one of the most cost effective ways for businesses to communicate with customers and prospects, with an estimated ROI of $38 for every $1 spent, yet 20 percent of legitimate emails never reach the inbox," says Scott Heimes, CMO of SendGrid. "The 2016 Global Email Benchmark Report provides organizations with an industry benchmark that highlights successes, trends and establishes the best practices to deliver successful email marketing campaigns".
The report also looks at the popularity of recipients' email services. For most countries Gmail is the service of choice but in the UK, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and Peru it's Hotmail that's the most popular. Germans prefer GMX and Russians Mail.ru. Yahoo takes second place in the US, India, South Africa, Japan and other far eastern countries.
For more information you can download the full report from the SendGrid website.
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