Email marketing statistics

By Mark Brownlow | Licence this content

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Performance statistics - compendiums

MarketingSherpa
The 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide is the latest iteration of Sherpa's annual stat fest for email marketers, with 194 pages and over 170 charts and tables. This one includes data from a survey of 2700+ marketers.

MarketingProfs
The Email Marketing Factbook is a 67 page, 39 chart report which includes data on consumer behavior, response rates, current practices and tactics, etc.

EmailStatCenter
Collates individual statistics across 30+ relevant categories. Also runs its own occasional surveys, for example on compensation in the email marketing industry. Unlike all of the above, it's free.

Econsultancy
Produces two reports with statistics of interest to email marketers:

Note: some of those links are affiliate links.

Performance statistics - North America and International

Epsilon
You'll need to browse through their press releases to find links to quarterly "Email Trends and Benchmarks" reports on open rates, click rates and inbox deliverability, often broken down by industry. These are calculated based on the emails sent out by this ESP's customers

GraphicMail
Email performance indicators across 22 industries. Includes tips on how to improve those metrics, too.

Experian CheetahMail
Information on various KPIs, including revenue per email.

MailChimp
This ESP has also compiled average stats across its user base to produce open, click, bounce, unsubscribe and complaint rates for different industries and company sizes.

MailerMailer
This ESP has been aggregating its customers opens, clicks and other metrics since 2004 and putting out regular reports with industry breakdowns. Each report often has extras, such as the impact of some tactic or another (e.g. subject line length).

Bronto
A rolling 3-month overview of opens, clicks and delivery rates for this ESP's clients, split by industry.

GetResponse
The Metric Analysis look at opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes and complaints for each major continent from late 2009. The 2011 State of Email Marketing report reveals the results of a survey of SMB marketers on trends, practices and performance in email marketing and related activities.

Silverpop
The Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study looks at opens, clicks, subscribes, etc. But also tells you how these stats measure up for top and bottom performers. You can then compare your results to where you want to be, rather than a simple average.

Inbox Marketer - Canada
Benchmarks for Canada, including opens, clicks and bounces.

emarsys
B2B and B2C data, also with results split by industry and language.

Performance statistics - UK

DMA
The UK's DMA produces two email marketing benchmark reports:

Sign-up.to
The UK Email Marketing Benchmark Report covers opens, clicks and unsubscribes, all categorized by industry.

Performance statistics - Australia and New Zealand

Vision 6 (AUS)
A half-yearly report looking at opens, CTR and bounces, often cross-referenced to other data, such as industry, time of day, day of week and domain. Also stats on email clients used.

Responsys
The "Big Australian Report" contains performance benchmarks acros nine industries, as well as wider numbers and advice on other channels.

Jericho / Smart Mail Pro (NZ)
Looks at render rates, CTR, CTO, daily send volumes, and responses for different days of the week.

Performance statistics - Other countries

GraphicMail (South Africa)
Covers 22 industries in the USA and RSA, with comparisons. Plenty of tips on how to improve, too.

Juvlon (India)
Quarterly bounce, open and click stats aggregated across this ESP's customers.

E-Village (Netherlands)
Dutch metrics for opens, clicks, mobile versus desktop and more.

Emailmonday - automotive (Netherlands)
Emailmonday - travel (Netherlands)
Not performance metrics per se, but a very detailed look at send times, email tactics, email features etc. for these two Dutch industries.

Deliverability statistics

[Note: the Epsilon report cited above also monitors inbox deliverability.]

Return Path
The company produces various global and regional deliverability benchmark reports each year. Check the news category of their blog for release info and excerpts. The reports often detail how much email reaches the inbox, "junk" folder or goes MIA, with a closer look at how different ISPs perform in this context.

Consumer email surveys

Various companies have reviewed and surveyed consumer email habits, behaviors and attitudes to draw out insights for email marketers. See this 3-part blog series summarizing the research.

Webmail and email client market share

Webmail user numbers
Page tracking the relative size of the major webmail providers, particularly Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live Hotmail and Gmail.

Litmus
The top 10 email clients by market share, as collated from users of the Litmus analytics tool.

Campaign Monitor
Email client popularity, based on data collected from this email service provider's user base.

Notes: Email client tracking is only possible for those clients and webmail services that record an open (i.e. download a tracking image). Given the prevalence of image blocking, this can lead to skewed results. Be sure to read the caveats offered by the reporting services above.

To understand how it helps to know where people are reading your emails, see the post on email software popularity: 5 lessons for your list.

Competitive intelligence and monitoring services

See the Campaign Databases section of this post.