Industry KPIs: Email marketing metrics improved in most recent data—with a cautionary note

The trend: US email engagement rose in 2023 from 2022, the most recent year for which data was available—suggesting brands honed their targeting and delivered content that meets audience needs, per our Industry KPI data from GetResponse.

Core email metrics improved notably.

• Open rates shot up to 45.6% in 2023 from 30.7% the year before.
• Click-to-open rates, a measure of people who actually viewed an email, rose from 8.7% in 2022 to 9.5% in 2023.
• Clickthrough rates climbed from 2.7% in 2022 to 4.3% in 2023, indicating stronger interaction with email content.

Email’s value: Email marketing consistently delivers high ROI, and marketers have focused on enhancing subject lines and email messaging to compel recipients to act.

Emails help brands give their messaging to customers a personal touch. Forty-eight percent of marketers identified email as an effective way to deliver more relevant and personalized messages, per a March Ascend2 study. Email personalization can help boost loyalty and increase conversion rates, as seen in the travel and retail sectors in particular.

Why it matters: More than 82% of the US population engages with email, and we forecast the number of users will rise from 281.4 million this year to 290.1 million by 2027. Among marketers, 1 in 3 uses email, and 87% plan to maintain or boost their investment, per HubSpot’s The State of Marketing 2024 report.

These trends reflect email’s reliability, especially as marketing decision-makers plan to increase their use of tools like AI, automation, privacy/security features, and accessible design to make emails more effective and user-friendly, per a May Ascend2 survey.

A warning: Still, the data offers a cautionary note for brands.

• The email unsubscribe rate ticked up to 0.11% in 2023 from 0.08% in 2022, possibly signaling fatigue or information overload.
• Some 40% of consumers unsubscribe from brand emails and texts at least once a week, per a recent GetApp survey.
• The email spam rate also edged up to 0.01% in 2023 from 0.00% in 2022, which could indicate user frustration.

Brands that can keep emails personalized and relevant but not overwhelm users will likely reap benefits from using this channel.

Go deeper: Want more email benchmarking data? PRO+ subscribers have access to Industry KPIs, our collection of more than 400 benchmarks in marketing and retail and ecommerce across a range of industries and countries. Click here for more information.