Chart of the Day: Most people open a welcome email, but less than a quarter click through, meaning you could be missing out on a great opportunity to engage potential or new customers
According to GetResponse’s latest Email Marketing Benchmarks report, 82.57% people who receive a welcome email open it, but just 22.76% click through the website it is welcoming them to. This implies that even though they are expecting an email from your brand, the content of the email may not be relevant enough for them.
In terms of e-commerce, many people sign up for newsletters or create an account on a site in order to receive an offer. Failing to provide a discount within your email or not highlighting offers currently available on your site could result in a lower click-through rate and lost sales.
Other reasons for the low welcome email click-through rate could be that your email does not give them any reasons to believe. Saying a simple thanks for signing up and letting them know what emails they can expect to receive may be informative, but it doesn’t highlight your unique selling points.
Making sure that everyone who opens your welcome email knows what makes your brand stand out, could help to drive up your click-through rate. However, the report also shows that there are other things to consider when it comes to improving email engagement.
Location, location, location
According to GetResponse’s findings, the location of your recipient could play a part in your overall email open rate, as well as how many people are clicking through.
The best open rate, on average, is seen in South America, with 28.34% of recipients looking at brand emails. However, the average click-through rate in South America is only 3.85% while the click-to-open rate is just 13.59%.
In comparison, Europe has the second highest open rate (26.77%) but has an open rate of 4.58%. The continent’s click-to-open rate is also the highest among all the continents, standing at 17.12%, suggesting that recipients in Europe are more engaged with email in general.
At the other end of the scale, Africa has the lowest open rate, standing at only 19.21%, as well as the lowest click-through rate (2.7%), showing that overall engagement in this part of the world is low. Brands operating in Africa will, therefore, have to really make sure their emails stand out in order to get opened – think great subject lines – as well as to get people to click-through.
When it comes to individual countries, the Netherlands holds the top spot for the best open rate, with 41.84% of email recipients opening their mail. The Netherlands also has a high click-through rate of 7.08%, showing that email recipients are incredibly engaged.
The lowest performing country is India, which has an open rate of just 17.18% and a click-through rate of only 2.44%.
What these findings show is that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. You need to ensure you are segmenting your email list based on as many factors – including location – as possible to ensure that your message is as relevant as possible. This means changing the design, copy and your CTAs to drive the best engagement from every location and customer type.
Your industry plays a part
It isn’t just the location of recipients that impacts email engagement, the industry that emails are sent from also seems to affect how engaged people are.
The industry that sees the best results is restaurants and food, which sees an average open rate of 41.37%. However, the click-through rate (5.62%) isn’t as high as you might expect with so many people opening emails from the industry, suggesting that the content of the emails is not relevant or that they use weak CTAs.
The industry that fails to engage email recipients is, perhaps surprisingly, internet marketing. Brands in this industry see, on average, an open rate of only 15.82%, which is fairly low compared to the overall average of 23.67%. The click-through rate is also lower than the average 3.84%, coming in at just 2.58%.
Retail also doesn’t perform well compared to other industries, coming in fourth to last. However, the difference between this industry’s open rate (22.86%) compared to the average (23.67%) is much smaller. The same can be said for retail’s click-through rate, which, on average, stands at 3.72%.
While retail is almost on par with the average results across all industries, these results show that brands really need to do more to stand out from the crowd – especially when you consider how many e-commerce brands use email marketing.
Looking at other companies in your industry and seeing what they are doing differently with their emails can help you improve your strategy. You need to ensure that, no matter which industry you are in, your creative, content and calls to action are different and relevant enough to drive greater engagement.
However, it is also worth noting that overall email engagement across all industries is declining, which could be due to the recent GDPR changes, although more results are needed to see if this drop is set to continue.
What types of emails are best?
In terms of the types of emails that see the best results, triggered emails that are a reaction to an action taken by someone on your site seem to see the highest open and click-through rates. This type of email has an average open rate of 45.88%, accompanied by a click-through rate of 10.38%.
The benefit of these emails is that they are relevant to the recipient in the moment, which is likely why the open and click-through rates are so much higher than other email types.
The type of email that sees the worst results is newsletters, which have an average open rate of 21.61% and a click-through rate of 3.18%. This suggests that newsletters might not be as relevant to all subscribers and that brands aren’t segmenting their audiences successfully.
Personalized content definitely sees better results, so this should be built into your email marketing plan.
Final thoughts
There are a number of aspects that can affect the success of any marketing campaign, but relevance is a key driver when t comes to people opening your emails and clicking through to your site. Ensuring you combine triggered emails with newsletters designed for different segments will help to drive up your average results and deliver messages that your audience is interested in.
Looking at competitors, industry averages and past performances in terms of your emails can help you build a more successful strategy. On top of this, your strategy should be fluid in order to continue to test your messaging and email design in order to see which works best with each target audience.
Take a look at GetResponses’s other findings to see what else can affect the success of your emails.