We’ve just published our highly anticipated email marketing benchmarks report for 2022. In it, we analyse email engagement data from the almost 5.5 billion emails sent by our platform in 2022 against the 4.6 billion emails sent in 2020. As the leading South African bulk messaging platform, this analysis reveals some fascinating shifts in email marketing since the country went ‘back to normal’.
The 2022 benchmarks report uncovered that overall open, click, and click-to-open rates are all up from 2020. This is a positive sign for email marketing and the economy in general. Since Covid restrictions lifted in 2022, the report shows that some of the previous impact seen on email marketing appears to be lifting too.
Email Privacy & Platform Stats
One of the striking changes revealed in the 2022 email benchmarks is that email privacy adjustments made by email providers like have had a substantial impact on platform rates. This is because platform rates are measured using the same tracking technology used to measure email open rates; a metric that, due to the email privacy changes mentioned above, is becoming increasingly difficult for email marketing platforms to measure accurately.
So, while email opens on mobile and desktop appear to be plummeting and web app opens increasing, the report reveals that email marketers are moving into territory where they simply won’t know which platforms their recipients are using to open their emails anymore.
Industries That Stand Out
A handful of industries stood out across more than one metric. For instance, the report noted repeated positive trends in Technology, Business & Consulting, and Education & Training. It also flagged downturns in some engagement metrics for Logistics, and the Automotive industry.
We speculate that some of these trends are related to the changing market following email marketing’s ‘return to normal’ post the pandemic. Others may just be a case of optimising content for the audience. See the infographic below and assess for yourself.
2022 Email Benchmarks Infographic
Here’s an infographic of some of the overall stats from the report.
(Click image to download PDF)
About the Benchmarks Report
Every two years, we analyse the billions of emails sent by our email marketing platform to see what the latest engagement benchmarks are. Email marketers can use these benchmarks to see how their email engagement compares to the averages in their industries and across the South African market overall.
