About this email benchmarks report
We analyzed over 30 billion emails sent globally between January and December 2019. These campaigns were sent from Campaign Monitor customers from 171 countries to subscribers all around the world.
Key takeaways
01 | Government organizations continue to dominate open rates globally.
Though Government unseated Nonprofits as the top industry for highest open rates, this year’s top three industries in that category—Government, Nonprofit, and Education respectively—were also top performers in 2019’s report. However, they saw even better numbers in this year’s study.
Government open rates improved by a whopping 10.71% (from 19.79% last year to 30.5% this year). Nonprofit open rates improved by 4.81% (from 20.39% last year to 25.2% this year). And Education open rates improved by 4.5% (from 18.9% last year to 23.4% this year).
02 | Last year’s industry with the lowest open rates isn’t even in this year’s bottom three.
Consumer Packaged Goods only saw 14.53% open rates last year and remained consistent this year at 14.5% open rates. However, this year, that percentage was high enough to make it out of the bottom three.
The Automotive and Aerospace industry saw the lowest open rates of only 12.6%, dropping from around 17% last year. Meanwhile, Food and Beverage (13.0% this year vs 15.48% last year) as well as Retail (13.9% vs 14.98% last year) both experienced lower open rates than the previous year to remain in the bottom three.
03 | The click-through rates for government emails experienced a sharp jump this year.
The top three industries by click-through rate remained the same as in 2019, though the ranking differed. Government jumped two places to become the top industry for click-through rate, while Real Estate, Design and Construction Activities, and Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting also remained within the top three.
Government click-through rates improved by 1.06% (from 3.04% last year to 4.1% this year). Real Estate, Design and Construction Activities click-through rates improved by 1.02% (from 18.88% last year to 19.9% this year). And Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting click-through rates remained relatively consistent, decreasing by 0.16% (from 3.66% last year to 3.5% this year).
04 | Global Retail open rates dropped in 2019, though engagement remained high.
While Retail emails experienced lower open rates than the previous year (13.9% this year, down from 14.98% last year), the click-to-open rate of 15.2% remained higher than the 14.3% average. This means the people who open Retail emails are likely to visit their site.
Retail has some of the highest competition of all industries, which can lead to low open rates. Despite seeing lower open and click-through rates, 38% of US consumers report having been driven to action due to email.
05 | Tuesdays …
