Despite competition from other channels, and shifting consumer behaviour, email continues to be central to customer connection. Recent Statista insights note an expected increase in global email subscribers from 4.4 billion to 4.89 billion in 2027.
First-party data is essential to effective marketing. This is the case now more than ever, with platforms like TikTok, Google and Meta under greater pressure to demonstrate accountability and show greater respect for data privacy and regulation.
2025 trends vs 2024
Year-on-year, open and click-through rate data remains generally consistent, with automated and triggered sends continuing to outperform standard campaigns, driving higher engagement rates. 2025 has seen a slight increase in unsubscribe and bounce rates, but this may be due to evolving privacy regulations, stricter data hygiene or simply email fatigue.
The UK and Ireland lead the way on email open rates:
- Scheduled – marketing blast emails (39.5%)
- Automated – triggered by events or behaviours (45.9%)
- Transactional – triggered by customer actions (65.2%)
Whilst open rates have increased universally, this may be a distortion of the truth, due largely to mailbox providers and ISPs using tracking pixels and automatically marking emails as opened, regardless of recipient engagement (Apple Mail is one example of this).
Regardless, open rates remain a useful metric. They can be used as an internal benchmark to show engagement over time and shifting engagement levels. They also provide a useful benchmark against other brands in your region and can help to measure the effectiveness of your subject lines.
You can keep tabs on your deliverability per service provider by monitoring the performance of emails by domain. Where possible try to eliminate Non-Human Interaction (NHI) clicks and opens from your analytic reports, preferring more active signals of customer engagement.
Who’s getting it right & why?
Communications from transport, insurance, finance, medical and utilities providers yield higher and faster open rates due to their essential nature. Whereas Consumer Service brands are experiencing an uplift in open rates which indicates a shift in consumer behaviour towards service-driven, real-time or event communications. A consistent cadence of communications also aids the building of trust, as does ease of access to a preference centre to provide your audience with control.
Email campaigns from real estate, insurance, medical, transport and education industries see the highest click-through rates, effectively prompting recipients to act potentially due to their personalised and localised offerings reaching a motivated audience. Making emails aesthetically pleasing is key, as is performance (fast load times and mobile optimised). Clear call-to-action buttons that are above the fold and highlighted in the design, with compelling messages such as “View special offers” are the most effective.
AI Application
Consumers respond best to personalised experiences with your brand. AI-powered platforms analyse user behaviour in real-time, enabling marketers to reach out with the right message at the right time based on behavioural intelligence. AI tools also enable effortless predictive recommendations, personalised product offers, relevant upsell and cross-sell. This hyper-relevant messaging enables brands to stay ahead of customer expectations, delivering quality emails and engagement to improve the customer experience, boost conversion rates and increase customer lifetime value more efficiently.
Six ‘to-dos’
- With Internet service providers (ISPs) policing email authentication, abuse and spam complaints, and the likes of Gmail and Yahoo enforcing authenticated email sending, actioning ethical best practice is essential. Make sure that you’re adopting privacy-first strategies with clear opt-ins, one-click unsubscribes and accessible policies and consent forms to build trust with your audience. Set up Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) to help to boost deliverability.
- Data hygiene needs to be spotless. Ensure that you regularly audit emails against current compliance standards (including geographical regulations) and that your data collection, storage and maintenance practices comply with local regulations such as GDPR or CCPA.
- Engagement-based segmentation, only sending email to those who want to hear from you, is good practice, optimises deliverability and engagement, and can save you money! Considered re-engagement strategies for lapsing/lapsed contacts can be carefully deployed but should lead to an archiving/deletion of those who never re-engage (as per your data protection policy).
- Avoid increasing unsubscribe rates by being conscious of send frequency, audience appetite and engagement. Automated emails require careful consideration and planning, ensuring that you have planned out actions for every user eventuality (i.e. don’t send a reminder to somebody who has already actioned something).
- Stay up to date with the deliverability landscape, know your top domains, and the rules of local mailbox providers and ISPs, to avoid bounces due to content, volume and the time that you send. Maintaining a clean list, using double opt-in, authenticating emails, use of a trusted IP, staying within send limits and avoiding spam triggers can all help to maintain your sender reputation. Monitoring soft bounce rates can be a helpful flag of campaign deliverability.
- Testing subject lines and preheaders with creative variants (possibly incorporating emojis!?!) can provide useful insights as can experimenting with send times to determine which your audience responds best to. You might also like to use your “from address” to humanise the communication with an employee’s first name, or give the recipient an indication of what type of content they are receiving.
If you’d appreciate some insight, help and advice on how your email marketing strategy can support your Brand ✕ Performance effectiveness, then we’d love to hear from you.