Email marketing benchmark reports provide marketers with valuable information about how they compare to the industry norm; so I was pleasantly surprised to stumble across Campaign Monitor’s guide to the ultimate email marketing benchmarks for 2019.
With over 30 billion emails analysed across 4.2 million campaigns sent through Campaign Monitor in 2018, the report provides readers with the opportunity to see how their campaigns compare to industry standards, and how they can improve the strategy of their email marketing.
After delving into the report, we’ve picked out some of the most interesting stats and tips to share with you:
Industry Averages Look Positive
At first sight, the industry averages for our sectors look positive, with an average open rate of 18.25% for the engineering industry, and 17.96% for the IT/tech/software services sector. This is reinforced with the average of 14.74% click through rate for engineering, and a slightly higher 15.02% click rate for IT/tech/software services.
With an overall average 17.92% open rate and 14.10% click through rate for all industries, these are impressive stats for both sectors.
Thursday is the Best Day for Open Rates
The report revealed that Thursday features the best open rates for both sectors, with engineering featuring an open rate of 18.7% and IT tech/software services 18.2%.
However, for click to open rate, Tuesday is the best day for the engineering sector, whilst Sunday is the best for the IT/tech/software services. While there are no surprising stats for the engineering sector (Monday features the worst click to open rates), it has to be raised if the IT/tech/software services stats are real, or just due to randomness – as Sunday feels out of place in featuring the highest click to open rate.
Wednesday is the Worst Day for Unsubscribe Rates
Wednesday was shown to be the worst day overall for unsubscribe rates; however, although unsubscribe rates were high on a Wednesday, for the engineering sector Monday was in fact the worst day. Whilst the IT tech/software services featured a steady 18% of unsubscribe rates across four days of the week.
Four Ways to Improve your Unsubscribe Rate
The unsubscribe rate is an important figure to study, as it is a key way to tell if certain topics or subject lines drive up your unsubscribe number. With the benchmark report finding an average 0.17% of unsubscribe rates, the report shared four ways you can improve:
- Segment your audience to send more relevant emails
- Re-engage your audience to maintain list hygiene
- Use automation to build long-term brand engagement
- Remember that some list churn is normal and healthy
Improve your Email Click-to-Open Rate
An email click through rate is often used to measure the success or lack of, within a specific email campaign. With an overall average email click to open rate of 14.10%, Campaign Monitor revealed some keys ways you can improve your click-to-open rate:
- A/B test each email element individually
- Collect the right data to segment and personalize
- Include an irresistible, easy to click call to action
- Make sure your email renders well across devices
To find out more and read the full report, please click here.
