Half of Your Email Campaign’s Clicks Occur Within 3 Hours Post-Send + More Email Benchmarks

March 22, 2021

This article is included in these additional categories:

Customer Engagement | Customer-Centric | Digital | Email | Featured

GetResponse Cumulative Email Opens and Clicks by Hour Mar2021Email marketers are still feeling the challenge that comes with competition in the inbox and maintaining an engaged list. So, how long does it take for recipients to engage with emails campaigns? Here are some of the latest email benchmarks from GetResponse.

The analysis of 5.5 billion emails sent by GetResponse customers with at least 1,000 contacts between July 2019 and June 2020 shows that 21.5% of an email campaign’s opens occur within the first hour after being sent. By the sixth hour post-send, half (50.6%) of opens have occurred, while nearly three-quarters (73%) of opens take place within 24 hours.

These findings haven’t changed much in the past couple of years, with 2019 data showing that about half (51%) of opens took place within the first 7 hours after emails have been delivered, and close to three-quarters within 24 hours.

Campaign clicks appear to happen sooner, with 33.6% of clicks occurring within the first hour after an email is sent. By the third hour post-send, 51.4% of campaign clicks have occurred. Within 24 hours post-send, a full 81% of campaign clicks have happened.

Best Day of the Week

When looking at the best day of the week for having an email opened, Friday appears to be the day. It had the best open rate of the week (19.6%) as well as a slightly higher click-through rate (2.2%) than other days of the week. This same finding is echoed in recent email response data from Campaign Monitor, which also found that email engagement rates such as open rate and click-through-rate were highest on Friday.

Where GetResponse’s data differs from Campaign Monitor’s is the day with the best click-to-open. While the other study also found that Friday was the best day, GetResponse’s analysis found that Friday has one of the lowest click-to-open rates (11.2%), virtually equal to Mondays.

Number of Newsletters Per Week

The analysis found an inverse correlation between the number of newsletters sent out and engagement rates. Engagement rates are highest when only 1 newsletter is sent out per week. The open rate for 1 newsletter per week averages 30.1%, while the click-through rate and click-to-open rate are also highest at 3.6% and 12.1%, respectively.

However, engagement rates drop noticeably as the number of newsletter per week increases. For example, open rate, click-through rate and click-to-open rate fall to 19.8%, 1.8% and 9.1%, respectively when 4 newsletters are sent out each week.

Use of Preheader

Using a preheader — that small line of summary text that is displayed in the inbox — appears to impact engagement rates positively. The emails that used a preheader (13.6% of emails analyzed) had an average open rate of 22.3%, click-through rate of 3.3% and click-to-open rate of 14.9%. This is compared to the 86.4% of emails that did not use a preheader where the average open rate was 19.3%, with the average click-through rate and click-to-open rate also lower (2.3% and 11.5%, respectively).

For more email benchmarks, you can find more here.

About the Data: Findings are based on an analysis of 5.5 billion emails sent by GetReponse customers from July 2019 to June 2020, in 126 countries across 19 industries. The analysis was limited to active senders with at least 1,000 contacts.

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