• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, December 10, 2018

Driven by such occasions as Black Friday In July and National Coffee Day, the average email click-to-open rate (CTO) rose to 9.9% in the third quarter versus 9.0% in the second quarter and 8.2% in the third quarter of 2017, according to the 2018 Email Benchmark Report, a study by Yes Marketing.

National Coffee Day outperformed all other events in the period, achieving a CTO of 23.9%. Black Friday in July pulled 12.7%, Oktoberfest, 10.4% and National Dog Day, 9.0%.

Black Friday in July may have done well because of its proximity to Amazon Prime Day, showing that instead of fighting Prime day, marketers have “leveraged it a an energy moment,” the study states.

Mobile performed even better as a channel, jumping from 11.19% in the same period last year to 14%.

“Once subscribers have become accustomed to scanning through commercial emails on their phones, not many of them regress back to desktop,” the study observes.

There’s one other contributing factor: “Gmail now accounts for one in three email users, and Gmail’s app comes pre-installed on all Android devices.”

The insurance sectors enjoyed a 74.5% mobile CTO in the third quarter, and entertainment came in at 38.6%. However, the tech sector fell to 8.4%, from 9.5% in the second quarter, and the CPG industry slipped to 14.8% from 15.7%.

Of course, desktop still generates a higher average order value at $111.40 In third-quarter 2018, versus $86.20 for mobile. 

Yes Marketing recommends adopting one-click checkout on mobile, including features such as saved payment and shipping preferences. 

But there is a slight problem: The percentage of new subscribers is going down in the average marketer’s database. “This “means that brands are not doing enough to drive opt-ins,” the study notes.

And active subscribers? They are down to 7.5% in the third quarter from 8% in the same quarter last year, showing that “marketers are failing to keep subscribers engaged long-term when they do sign up,” it adds.

Returning to the positive side, the third-quarter holidays did better than first-quarter themes such as Groundhog Day (4.5%), Pie Day (6.4%) and the Grammy Awards (7.4%). In the second quarter, Tax Day led with a 11.6% CTO. 

Yes Marketing studied 6 billion emails sent in the third quarter through its cross-channel communication platform Yesmail360i.