MoEngage, the trusted cross-channel customer engagement platform serving over 1,350 brands, has unveiled its latest Email Benchmarks Report: Optimizing Email for 2025 and Beyond. This comprehensive report provides data-driven insights into the performance of over 17.3 billion marketing emails sent via the MoEngage platform. It enables brand marketers to evaluate their email campaigns against benchmarks for delivery rates, open rates, click-to-open rates (CTOR), conversion rates, and unsubscribe rates.
Exploring the Power of Personalization in Emails
The report delves deep into the effectiveness of different levels of email personalization, categorizing emails into:
- Attribute-based emails: Emails tailored using static customer attributes.
- Journey-based emails: Messages triggered by specific customer journeys.
- Behavior-based emails: Emails customized based on customer actions or behaviors.
These types are compared against broadcast emails, which lack personalization. MoEngage’s findings emphasize the increasing importance of personalized email strategies across industries, particularly in Retail and Ecommerce, Media and Entertainment, and Banking and Financial Services (BFSI).
Key Finding: Behavior-Based Emails Lead the Way
Among the different email types analyzed, behavior-based emails emerged as the top-performing category. They consistently outshine broadcast emails in engagement and conversion metrics across industries.
- Retail and Ecommerce: Behavior-based emails deliver a remarkable 60.7x conversion rate and a 22.6x CTOR, making them the most effective for driving customer actions.
- Banking and Financial Services (BFSI): Journey-based emails also perform exceptionally well, showcasing the sector’s need for highly targeted communications.
- Media and Entertainment: While this sector excels in email deliverability (99.95%), it experiences a higher unsubscribe rate (6.35%) for broadcast emails, indicating that audiences are less tolerant of generic messaging.
According to Raviteja Dodda, CEO of MoEngage, “The insights in the MoEngage Email Benchmarks Report will help brand marketers adjust their customer engagement strategies to achieve greater success with email campaigns in 2025. The data is clear: non-personalized and broadcast emails provide no value. To create meaningful connections, marketers must invest in deeply personalized emails that are segmented for the right audience and based on each customer’s behavior and interactions with the brand.”
Industry-Specific Insights from the MoEngage Report
Retail and Ecommerce: Driving Engagement Through Personalization
The Retail and Ecommerce sector leads in adopting advanced email personalization techniques. Behavior-based emails achieve unparalleled results, with conversion rates soaring to 60.7x. CTOR for these emails is 22.6x higher than broadcast emails, demonstrating the importance of tailoring content to customer actions such as abandoned cart reminders or purchase follow-ups.
BFSI: A Decline in Broadcast Email Effectiveness
The Banking and Financial Services sector highlights the pitfalls of sticking to generic broadcast emails. Open and unsubscribe rates for broadcast emails have worsened, indicating that customers expect more personalized and relevant content. However, journey-based emails—triggered by actions like new account openings or loan inquiries—show promising performance, underlining the importance of lifecycle-based communication strategies.
Media and Entertainment: High Deliverability but Room for Improvement
The Media and Entertainment industry achieves the highest email deliverability rate at 99.95%, thanks to optimized sender reputation and segmentation practices. However, the unsubscribe rate for broadcast emails is also the highest at 6.35%, signaling audience fatigue with generic messaging. Behavior-based and journey-based emails are key to retaining subscriber interest in this competitive sector.
Timing Matters: Best Months for Email Campaigns
Timing plays a critical role in email marketing success. The MoEngage report highlights the best months for sending campaigns, based on industry trends and customer behavior:
- Banking and Financial Services: January sees the highest open rates, as consumers prioritize financial planning after the holiday season.
- Conversion Focus: April emerges as the top month for conversion-driven emails, coinciding with tax season, when customers are likely to take action on financial offers.
For marketers, aligning email campaigns with seasonal customer behaviors can significantly enhance engagement and conversion rates.
Actionable Takeaways for Email Marketers
The MoEngage Email Benchmarks Report provides actionable insights to refine email marketing strategies:
- Prioritize Behavior-Based Personalization: Behavior-based emails outperform all other types, particularly in Retail and Ecommerce. Tailor campaigns to customer actions like browsing history, purchases, or abandoned carts.
- Focus on Journey-Based Campaigns: For BFSI and Media sectors, journey-based emails provide a strong alternative to non-personalized campaigns, driving engagement and reducing unsubscribe rates.
- Avoid Overusing Broadcast Emails: Generic emails are losing relevance, with higher unsubscribe rates and declining performance across industries.
- Leverage Seasonal Trends: Plan email campaigns around key months like January and April to maximize open rates and conversions.
Why Personalization is Non-Negotiable for 2025
As customer expectations for relevance and value continue to grow, personalization is no longer optional for email marketing. Non-personalized emails fail to create meaningful customer connections and often result in higher unsubscribe rates. By leveraging data-driven insights, marketers can craft emails that resonate with their audience, driving engagement and conversions.
A Final Word from MoEngage
MoEngage’s Email Benchmarks Report underscores the critical role of personalization in email marketing success. As brands gear up for 2025, adopting insights-led strategies is crucial to staying ahead in competitive markets.
Marketers looking to optimize their email campaigns can explore the full report to gain deeper insights into the trends shaping customer engagement in the year ahead.