What are the latest email marketing benchmarks for Australian businesses?
By keeping track of your email marketing performance, particularly against email marketing benchmarks, you can work your way to a more engaged and profitable email list.
If you wanna know what email marketing benchmarks you should be measuring up against then keep scrolling my friend, we’ve got you covered!
The average email open rate in Australia is 20.6%
What it is an email open rate?
The percentage of subscribers on your mailing list who received your email and hit *open sesame* – be it for a few seconds or minutes.
Quick side note: Open rates aren’t as reliable as they used to be — thanks to new Apple privacy features that allow iPhone users to hide when they’ve opened an email and also mask their IP address.
How to improve your email open rates
People will generally open an email for one of these three reasons:
- Because of who sent it
- Because of a compelling/interesting subject line
- Because of what you’re offering them
Keeping this in mind, you can play around with:
The sender name you use. If your sender name is your business name, you could try using your own name (if you’re the business owner that is, if not, it might come across a lil weird). This can make the email feel more like a personal message than a sales opportunity.
Your subject line. You can test these variables and see what gets a better response from your audience:
- Using emojis (they’re fun, striking and get the point across)
- Making the copy longer/shorter (the golden rule here is to use between 6 – 10 words to convey your message)
- Asking a question or making a bold statement
- Try personalising your subject line with the recipient’s name
Following your subject line is your preheader text. I like to use this section as a bit of a blurb for what’s to come — it looks more profesh and is way more attention grabbing then a run-on email preview.
Your email open rate could be low because you haven’t found the optimal sending time for your audience yet. Experiment with what days/times you’re sending content — the results might shock you.
The average email click-to-open rate (CTOR) in Australia is 14.8 %
What is email click-to-open rate?
Of all the people who opened your email, it is the percentage that then went on to click a link.
For instance: 500 people were sent your email but only 200 people opened it. Of those 200 people, 20 clicked on a link in your email. Your CTOR would be 10%.
How to improve your email click-to-open rate
- Streamlining how many CTA (call to actions) you include. If you’re asking your reader to do multiple things, chances are they’ll do none of them. Direct their attention. Make it simple.
- Are your emails super lengthy? Ain’t nobody got time for that! Make it short and snappy. If you want to speak more deeply on a certain topic, direct your readers to a blog post. The ones who’re interested will follow.
- Include a strong visual that communicates your message — your readers will get the gist faster (plus, visuals break up blocky/boring text).
- Optimize your email for mobile. All the cool kids are reading emails on their phones these days — make sure your email reads well across multiple devices.
- You could also experiment with your CTA button colours and see what pops and attracts attention.
The average email bounce rate in Australia is 1%
What is email bounce rate?
Is it the percentage of people that couldn’t receive your email. This could be because the email address provided was fake, the address isn’t active anymore, or the recipient’s inbox is full, amongst other things.
How to improve your email bounce rate
- Believe it or not, there is a difference between types of ‘bounces’. You have hard bounces, or, you can have a soft bounce. A hard bounce is from something permanent like a fake address. A soft bounce is from a temporary problem that can be solved.
- You could go the route of requiring a double opt-in. What does that mean? Once someone has signed up to receive your emails, they’ll be sent another email to verify their email address. Once their email is verified, they get added to the list.
- Send emails from a reputable email marketing platform. Sending mass emails from a Gmail or Yahoo account will get you zapped by spam filters and likely end up disabling your email address, too.
- Do a sweep of your mailing list regularly and check to see which email addresses are a repeat problem.
The average email unsubscribe rate in Australia is 0.20 %
What is email unsubscribe rate?
The percentage of people that elected to opt-out of future emails from you, of the total number of subscribers you emailed.
How to improve your email unsubscribe rate
- First of all, I want to say that unsubscribe rates generally get a bad wrap! Having a healthy trickle (keyword: HEALTHY) of people unsubbing is a good thing. It means they’re not vibing with your content and aren’t going to be the brand ambassador you need. And that’s fine! It’s better to know now and focus on building relationships with people who do gel with your biz.
- In saying that — if your unsubscribe rates are continuously high, there could be another reason for it that you need to get on top of pronto!
- Are you sending too many campaigns?
- Are you not sending enough and people are forgetting about your biz — then you show up again and they’re like, um, who are you again? Unsub!
- It’s important to set your subscribers’ expectations from the start. When they join your list, tell ‘em when they’ll be hearing from you and what content they’ll be receiving. If you set expectations from the get-go, it’s generally pretty hard to disappoint.
- Ask for feedback! The best way to figure out what the problemo is, is by asking the person directly. If someone’s unsubbed, make sure you ask them why with a quick survey.
- Get fancy and segment your mailing list by interests. If someones receiving content that isn’t relevant to their needs at the time, then of course they’re not gonna stick around for more.
