Email opens soar as mobiles rule

Open rates for email marketing campaigns have risen by nearly 7% in the past year as the rise of the smartphone gives the discipline a major shot in the arm, according to a new study.
The 2014 UK Email Benchmarking Report by Sign-up.to is based on over 1.5 billion emails and covers 25 industry sectors, from online services to fashion and charity to music.
This year’s report has seen the overall average open rate increase from 21.47% to 22.87% – a 6.5% increase – with clickthroughs also rising from 3.16% to 3.26%.
Sign-up.to founder and chief executive Matt McNeill said: “This is a relatively substantial increase that has been driven by two major changes in the email landscape. Firstly, the huge increase in mobile views, now at around 50% of all opens. Most mobile email clients load images by default – and image loads are required to track opens.
“Second, and much more recently (so the impact on this year’s report is small) is Google’s change to loading images viewed through its Gmail interface automatically when an email is first viewed, rather than asking the user to allow loading. As with the increase in mobile views the result of this is a more accurate measure of actual opens.”
The most popular emails in terms of engagement are those sent by public sector organisations, with the top five also including online services, ecommerce, fashion, B2C retail.
For a full sector by sector breakdown of the report, please follow this link.