The education, healthcare, retail and consumer products/services verticals performed the best of the 14 industries. Higher click-through rates in these sectors might reflect their content, which the report suggests usually relies more on news and information than on promotions.

Separate research from the new Econsultancy/Adestra Email Marketing Census also asked respondents what their average CTR is from both desktop and mobile.

It found that the average CTR on desktop computers is significantly higher than on mobile devices, at 9% and 4% respectively.

The Census gives an in-depth look at the state of the email marketing industry including the amount and type of email marketing carried out by organisations, the way that email marketing is conducted, issues affecting the industry and the effectiveness of email compared to other digital marketing channels.

Open rates

The Silverpop report also reveals the open rate across different industries, which is a simple calculation of the number of measured opened messages divided by the number of delivered messages.

Education organisations again achieved the highest average unique open rate (26.2%), followed by consumer products (23.8%) and financial services (22%).

The top quartile in the education sector actually achieved an open rate of 46.1%, while the top retailers reached a similarly impressive 39.6%.

At the other end of the scale computers/telecoms/electronics achieved the lowest average unique open rate (13.4%), closely followed by travel and leisure (13.6%).

However the report notes that the open rate doesn’t accurately capture all opens due to image blocking and other factors and can actually underreport the number of recipients who view your message. 

This uncertainty underscores the importance of not over-relying on the open rate as a key measure of subscriber engagement.