• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, February 20, 2017

Good news for email marketers -- or at least, the majority of email marketers. The latest research from email provider SignUp.to analysed one and a half billion emails during 2016 and found that average open rates are once again remaining where they have been for the latest five years, at around 25%. However, click-through and click-to-open rates have both increased significantly from 3.42% to 4.19% and 10.88% to 11.88%, respectively. Increases in click-through rate were seen in 19 of the 29 tracked b2b and b2c sectors.

Of these 29 tracked sectors, the highest open rate was seen with government (45%) and legal and accounting (36%) at the top of the table -- exactly the same positions as last year. Five sectors scored less than an average open rate of 20%, with B2C services, restaurant/hospitality and publishing at the bottom of the league table.

So the overall finding can probably be summed up thus: that content people feel they have to engage with or miss out in some way is obviously the most likely to be clicked on. Government and legal or accounting information is usually something we feel we have to take notice of, or we will either miss out on an entitlement or be fined in some way for not complying with a regulation. It's not the most positive FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), but it's likely an explanation of why the sectors are at the top of the table. 

The opposite is likely to be true in b2c services, hospitality and publishing, then, where content doesn't quite have that FOMO sensation about it. These are sectors where everything is usually all about pumping out offers to people whose inboxes are already crumbling under the strain of too many emails and too many brands trying to flog them stuff every day.

So it's probably quite an obvious finding, but it just might help serve as a reminder that FOMO is incredibly important in getting emails opened and clicked on. There's not much you can do about the volume of email that consumers are getting from other people, but you can at least make sure that yours are worded so they invoke a fear that not reading the content and not clicking through will mean missing out on something they would rather have received or participated in.