IBM Marketing Cloud’s annual report of email marketing benchmarks offers marketers open, click through, list churn and mobile metrics to help you see where you rank, delivering more visuals so you can better understand the data, and sharing more observations to help improve your marketing programs.
The IBM Marketing Cloud’s 2016 survey examines messages sent by nearly 750 companies and 3,000 brands in 2015, using a wide variety of measurements to establish benchmarks on customer engagement (via multiple open, click and device/email client metrics) and list churn (hard bounces, unsubscribes and complaints).
Editor’s Note: With selected edits and layout modifications, the report introduction is offered here verbatim for your review. For the complete IBM report, please follow the source address at the conclusion.
This year, there are several new measures and comparisons to give you deeper insights into email performance. Key findings include:
1. Non-holiday emails outperformed holiday-period messaging.
2. The “frequency math effect” surfaced.
3. Mobile email readership is highest in emerging economies and the United Kingdom, while Retail & Ecommerce had the lowest engagement rates.
Most studies focus only on “average” benchmarks. However, in today’s super competitive marketplace, “average” has become the new bottom. The report encourages the reader to set sights higher. Compare your company’s open, click-through and list churn results to those you find in the top and bottom quartiles for each measurement as well as the mean and the median.
According to the study, the open rate works best as an in-house benchmark to track over time, because it can signal progress or problems with engagement. It’s also not a completely accurate metric because it doesn’t capture all opens due to image blocking and other factors. In other words, says the report, track your open rate for comparison to your other messages, but don’t use it as a sole measure of campaign success.
Unique Open Rate (by Country/Region) | ||||
| Open Rate (Unique) | |||
Country/Region | Mean | Median | Top Quartile | Bottom Quartile |
Overall | 21.8% | 18.3% | 41.6% | 7.9% |
United States | 21.3% | 17.6% | 40.9% | 7.9% |
Canada | 32.2% | 29.5% | 52.9% | 15.6% |
United Kingdom | 24.3% | 21.2% | 43.1% | 10.9% |
Rest of Europe | 19.4% | 15.5% | 37.7% | 6.9% |
Middle East & North Africa | 12.0% | 9.5% | 27.0% | 2.0% |
Australia & New Zealand | 32.9% | 27.8% | 58.1% | 16.2% |
Rest of World | 21.1% | 20.5% | 37.7% | 7.3% |
Source |
Unique Open Rate (by Industry) | ||||
| Open Rate (Unique) | |||
Industry | Mean | Median | TopQuartile | BottomQuartile |
Automobiles & Transportation | 27.3% | 24.1% | 47.3% | 11.8% |
Banks & Financial Services | 23.3% | 18.7% | 46.5% | 7.8% |
Computer Hardware & Telecommunications | 24.9% | 22.5% | 44.6% | 9.1% |
Computer Software & Online Services | 20.8% | 17.4% | 39.8% | 7.5% |
Consumer Products | 25.1% | 21.1% | 48.1% | 8.6% |
Consumer Services | 21.6% | 19.0% | 40.9% | 7.4% |
Corporate Services | 23.0% | 20.3% | 41.9% | 9.1% |
Food Service, Sports & Entertainment | 20.7% | 16.6% | 42.3% | 5.9% |
Hospitals, Healthcare & Biotech | 26.1% | 23.3% | 49.4% | 8.1% |
Industrial Manufacturing & Utilities | 25.9% | 22.5% | 46.5% | 10.9% |
Insurance | 27.5% | 24.4% | 50.2% | 10.2% |
Lodging, Travel Agencies & Services | 22.7% | 18.5% | 40.8% | 11.3% |
Marketing Agencies & Services | 18.2% | 13.6% | 37.4% | 6.5% |
Media & Publishing | 19.3% | 16.5% | 34.8% | 8.5% |
Nonprofits, Associations & Government | 26.4% | 23.8% | 43.1% | 14.4% |
Real Estate, Construction & Building Products | 25.6% | 23.4% | 41.6% | 13.7% |
Retail & Ecommerce | 20.5% | 16.8% | 39.2% | 8.0% |
Schools & Education | 30.9% | 27.3% | 58.7% | 8.4% |
Source |
IBM Marketing Cloud (formerly known as Silverpop) is a cloud-based digital marketing provider that offers email marketing, lead-to-revenue management and mobile engagement solutions. To gain access to the service, please visit here.