UK email marketers can benchmark their performance against the rest of the country today, courtesy of new research.
A survey by email marketing software provider Sign-Up.to shows average open rates sitting at 24.88% throughout 2015, accounting for an overall increase of 1.8% year on year, while click-through rates averaged 3.43% – an annual increase of 9.3%.
The stats are based on analysis of over one billion emails sent via Sign-Up.to’s platform within the UK throughout 2015, across 29 industry verticals.
The legal & accounting (37.25%) and TV/radio/film (35.81%) sectors topped the list as the types of brands most likely to drive opens on marketing emails, while government comms enjoyed the highest click-through rates at 9.69%.
However, ten sectors across the board saw an average increase in open rates, with the largest of these within B2B (22.69%), fashion (23.82%) and sales/marketing design (25.31%).
“Our 2016 Email Marketing Benchmark Report continues to indicate that the benefits of email marketing are growing,” said Matt McNeill, brand director for Sign-Up.to.
“Overall, the report shows that brands that take the opportunity to understand and profile their audience and offer relevant, timely and valuable messages are rewarded with better open rates, improved levels of engagement and ultimately greater customer loyalty.”
Cross-device marketers will be pleased to know that mobile continues to be an effective platform for email messages, with emails received by smartphone and tablet users boasting average open rates of 54.59%.
Additionally, the report found that automated marketing is seeing significant uplifts in terms of open and click-through rates – averaging 56.43% and 31.13% respectively – with this due to its personal nature, according to Sign-Up.to.
Commonly automated messages include welcome emails, date-triggered mailouts such as birthdays, or those for basket-abandonment recovery.