Email marketing stats show why this channel remains the top performer for digital marketing ROI in 2025. Businesses generate an average return of $36 for every $1 spent on email marketing – this is a big deal as it means a 3600% ROI. Marketing teams are increasing their focus on email strategies due to these impressive results.
The reach of email marketing has become massive with about 4.6 billion users worldwide in 2025. People send 376 billion emails daily, and this number should hit 408 billion by 2027.
Email marketing works especially when you have 88% of users checking their inbox multiple times each day. The results keep getting better, as 52% of email marketing professionals say their campaign ROI doubled between 2022 and 2023.
A business's total marketing spend includes just 7.8% for email marketing, yet it delivers returns nowhere near other advertising methods. The US email marketing revenue will exceed $9.5 billion by 2024. Marketers must understand the latest trends and standards to stay competitive.
How open rates are evolving in 2025
Email marketing open rates have transformed dramatically in 2025. The average rate in any discipline now stands at 42.35%. This soaring rise shows a radical alteration from earlier years that reflects changes in user behavior and tracking mechanisms. The numbers paint just one part of the picture since the definition of an "open" has progressed.
Why open rates matter more than ever
Open rates continue to be a basic indicator of email campaign performance, even with measurement challenges. They act as the first step toward deeper engagement and determine email marketing success. Strong open rates show that subject lines strike a chord with readers and your email list has interested subscribers.
Your chances of landing in the inbox depend on open rates. Email service providers watch engagement metrics carefully to determine spam classification. Subscribers who open your emails regularly send ESPs clear signals about valuable content. This protects your sender reputation and helps future deliverability.
Open rates reveal how relevant and appealing your content is. Marketers can spot trends and improve their email marketing strategies based on this data.
Open rate benchmarks by industry
The 2025 open rates vary considerably across sectors:
|
Industry |
Open Rate |
|
Non-profit |
53.21% |
|
Health and fitness |
48.9% |
|
Education |
45.32% (up from 28.5% in 2021) |
|
Financial Services |
43.26% (up from 27.1% in 2021) |
|
Marketing |
39.05% |
|
Retail |
37.5% (up from 17.1% in 2021) |
|
Manufacturing |
32.65% |
These numbers show that businesses of all types have improved substantially in the last few years. Notwithstanding that, these standards should serve as guidelines rather than fixed targets since your audience might behave differently.
How privacy changes affect tracking
Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), launched with iOS 15, has changed the landscape of open rates in 2025. This feature has completely altered how open tracking works. Email content now loads through Apple proxy servers, whatever the actual reading status of messages.
Apple Mail's 48% share of the email client market has created major ripples. The collateral damage includes:
- Inflated open rates – Apple's content preloading makes every email appear opened, regardless of user action
- Loss of geolocation data – Marketers can't segment or target by location without accurate IP addresses
- Unreliable engagement metrics – Open timestamps don't mean much anymore, which limits insights into optimal send times and recipient engagement
Marketers have adapted their approach as a result. The focus has moved from open rates to more reliable metrics like click-throughs, conversions, and time spent on landing pages. This challenge has pushed email marketing toward metrics that better show real user interest and intent.
To summarize, while 2025's open rates look better than ever, savvy marketers know they need more than this one metric to understand how well their campaigns perform.
What the latest email marketing data reveals
Email marketing data from 2025 shows how email dominates the digital world at a massive scale. Messages exchanged globally each day prove that email remains the foundation of online interaction both personally and professionally.
Global email volume and user base
The worldwide email user base has grown to 4.59 billion people in 2025. This number will likely reach 4.85 billion users by 2027. More than half the world's population now uses email, making it accessible to more people than most marketing platforms.
Users send and receive 361.6 billion emails every day in 2025. This number should climb to 408.2 billion daily emails by 2027. Spam makes up 49% of these messages, which means about 162 billion unwanted emails float around daily.
These numbers become even more striking when broken down by time:
|
Time Period |
Number of Emails |
|
Per day |
361.6 billion |
|
Per hour |
15.1 billion |
|
Per minute |
251 million |
|
Per second |
4.2 million |
Top countries by email activity
The United States stands out by generating 9.7 billion emails daily. This leadership position reflects the country's large digital population and its dependence on email communication.
European nations follow close behind. Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands each generate over 8 billion emails daily. High email activity in these Western nations associates strongly with digital business growth and marketing maturity.
The top email-sending countries are:
- United States (9.7 billion daily)
- Germany
- India
- Belgium
- France
- Japan
- Ireland
- United Kingdom
- Netherlands
- Australia
Email frequency and user behavior
Checking email has become part of everyone's daily routine. Research shows 88-99% of email users check their inbox daily. Many people check multiple times throughout the day.
User behavior breaks down this way:
- 42% check their emails three to five times daily
- 28% check 10-20 times daily
- 19% check more than 20 times per day
- 8% check once daily
- All but one of these groups check their email daily (3%)
Business professionals use email even more. Office workers receive about 121 emails and send around 40 emails daily. They spend between 5 and 15.5 hours each week managing email, depending on their role and industry. Knowledge workers might spend up to 28% of their week on email tasks.
Smartphones and tablets have changed how 54% of users check their emails. Each generation shows different priorities—millennials and Gen Z love mobile access, while baby boomers stick to desktop platforms.
Marketing campaigns have adapted to match how people use email. Databox research reveals that 33.3% of marketers send weekly promotional emails, 26.7% choose monthly updates, and 13.3% stay in touch daily. About 63.3% of marketers send fewer emails to inactive subscribers.
These basic email usage statistics are vital foundations to measure and improve email marketing results through 2025 and beyond.
The role of mobile in email engagement
Mobile devices have become our main gateway to email, with a staggering 55% of all email opens happening on smartphones and tablets by 2025. This dramatic change shows how audiences now connect with email marketing campaigns differently, pushing marketers to reinvent their approach.
Mobile vs desktop open rates
The battle between mobile and desktop email usage has a clear winner. Research shows 85% of emails are opened on mobile devices, while desktop email checking appeals to only 26.9% of users. This gap keeps growing as more people worldwide adopt smartphones.
The relationship between opens and conversions tells an interesting story. Desktop users show deeper participation despite mobile's dominance in open rates. People tend to quickly scan emails on mobile during commutes and breaks.
Desktop users take more time to read and click through emails. Desktop conversion rates stay higher because of easier navigation and bigger screens.
This creates what experts call the "mobile triage" effect – users first check emails on mobile but switch to desktop later for messages that need more attention.
User priorities by generation
Each generation shows different device priorities for reading emails. Mobile rules the younger crowd – 67% of Generation Z and 59% of Millennials use smartphones as their main device to check email.
Gen Z consumers expect mobile-friendly emails. Older users lean heavily toward desktop platforms. The 56-67 age group shows interesting patterns – only 8% check emails first on smartphones, and 55% never use mobile devices to open emails first.
These generational differences explain why timing matters. Weekend email activity spikes on mobile, while desktop usage peaks during work hours.
Collateral damage of poor mobile design
Bad mobile design comes at a high cost. Half of all recipients delete emails that don't work well on mobile within three seconds. People reject these emails quickly because 42.3% of users instantly delete emails that aren't mobile-friendly.
Design problems that turn users away include:
- Text too small to read easily
- Buttons hard to tap with thumbs
- Slow-loading or broken images
- Cluttered multi-column layouts on small screens
- Cut-off subject lines (should stay under 40 characters)
These issues hurt business results. Mobile-friendly emails can boost clicks by 24%, and mobile-ready buttons get 25% more clicks than text links.
The best mobile emails keep it simple with three or fewer images and about 20 lines of text. This approach ensures quick loading and easy reading on smaller screens.
Personalization, AI, and automation trends
Personalized content has become the life-blood of successful email marketing in 2025. Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. Brands now create highly targeted content that connects better with their audiences throughout the customer's buying process.
Subject line personalization rates
The numbers prove personalized subject lines work – they boost open rates by at least 50%. Modern marketers understand this value, with 36% making subject line personalization their top priority. Results show personalized emails drive six times higher transaction rates, which proves they convert better.
AI use in email copy and targeting
45% of companies now use artificial intelligence for their email marketing, while another 21% will start using it in 2024. The investment makes sense since 47% of marketers say AI has brought "extremely positive" results to their email campaigns. AI helps analyze behavior patterns, finds the best sending times, and creates targeted content efficiently.
Automation's impact on revenue
The numbers tell a compelling story – automated emails produced 41% of email orders in 2024, yet made up only 2% of all emails sent. Automated sequences convert remarkably well – one in three readers who open these emails buy something.
Welcome emails and cart abandonment reminders perform even better, converting one in two opens into sales. These results confirm automation's power to boost revenue.
Segmentation and dynamic content usage
Smart segmentation leads to 30% higher open rates and 50% more click-throughs than basic campaigns. Today's marketers segment their lists using detailed data like purchase history, browsing patterns, and predicted behavior.
Dynamic content has become standard practice – it changes based on subscriber data and delivers relevant content to each person. This approach helps create meaningful connections with specific audience groups and improves overall engagement.
These personalization trends show why companies that invest in email marketing technology continue to see great returns.
Email marketing performance and ROI
Email marketing's extraordinary ROI stands unmatched in 2025. Businesses earn an average of $36 for every $1 spent. This amazing 3600% return makes email the best-performing digital channel for marketing investment.
Click-through and conversion rates
Industry click-through rates differ by a lot, with averages between 1.7% and 3.57%. B2B marketing emails have a slightly lower open rate (15.14%) compared to B2C (19.7%). However, B2B achieves a higher 3.18% click rate versus 2.09% for B2C. Most conversion rates fall between 2-5%. Abandoned cart email campaigns show exceptional results with a 50.5% open rate.
Unsubscribe and bounce rate trends
Average unsubscribe rates range from 0.1% to 0.48%. Email relevance remains the main reason for unsubscribes (40%). Users report receiving too many emails from senders (69%), while 56% mention irrelevant content. Another 51% say the content wasn't what they expected. Bounce rates stay consistent, averaging between 0.58% and 0.7%.
Email vs social media and SMS
Email performs better than other channels. It beats banner ads and SMS by 108%. It outperforms social media posts by 13% and social media ads by 11%. SMS shows higher click-through rates at 6-19% compared to email's average 1.7%. Email delivers better ROI because SMS lacks the design flexibility needed for high-ticket offers.
Marketing statistics on ROI growth
Companies show impressive ROI figures: 35% achieve $10-$36 per dollar invested, 30% receive $36-$50, and 5% ended up generating over $50. Different industries show strong returns: retail/ecommerce (45:1), marketing agencies (42:1), technology (36:1), and media/entertainment (32:1).
Statista expects email marketing revenue to grow by 286.6%, rising from $9.70 billion in 2024 to $37.50 billion by 2032.
Conclusion
Email marketing stats for 2025 show this channel stands unmatched in effectiveness. It delivers a stunning 3600% ROI while open rates keep evolving with privacy changes. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection has changed how we define "open," pushing smart marketers to look beyond this metric to assess campaign success.
Numbers tell the real story – email reaches 4.6 billion users worldwide and sends over 361 billion messages daily. Marketing teams pour more resources into email strategies because of this massive reach, even though it takes just 7.8% of total marketing budgets.
Mobile devices now rule the digital world and handle 55% of all opens. Poor mobile optimization leads 42.3% of users to delete emails right away. Each generation shows different engagement patterns. Gen Z and Millennials strongly prefer smartphones, while older age groups stick to desktop platforms.
Personalization has become a must-have feature. Subject lines with personal touches get 26% more opens and drive six times more transactions. AI adoption has reached 45% of companies and makes sophisticated targeting possible at scale.
Automation's effect might be the biggest story here. Automated sequences create 41% of all email orders while sending just 2% of total emails. This big win shows why businesses keep investing in advanced email marketing tech.
Email beats other channels hands down. It works 13% better than social posts, 11% better than social ads, and 108% better than banner ads. Marketers who mix new tech with solid engagement basics will keep seeing great returns through 2025 and beyond.
Privacy changes have altered the map of tracking capabilities. Smart email marketers adapt their approach now. Top campaigns focus on meaningful metrics like conversions, click-throughs, and landing page interactions instead of just open rates. These deeper metrics give better insights about campaign performance and customer relationships.
Email marketing keeps its crown as the ROI champion in digital marketing by delivering real results.
FAQs
Q1. What is the average ROI for email marketing in 2025?
For every $1 spent on email marketing, businesses generate an average return of $36, which translates to a 3600% ROI. This exceptional performance makes email marketing the most cost-effective digital marketing channel.
Q2. How have open rates changed in 2025?
Open rates have significantly increased, with the average across industries reaching 42.35%. However, these figures are affected by privacy changes, particularly Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, which has altered how opens are tracked and measured.
Q3. What percentage of emails are opened on mobile devices?
About 85% of emails are opened on mobile devices, with 55% of all email opens occurring on smartphones and tablets. This trend highlights the importance of mobile-optimized email design.
Q4. How effective is email personalization?
Personalization has a significant impact on email performance. Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened and generate six times higher transaction rates compared to non-personalized emails.
Q5. What role does automation play in email marketing?
Automated emails have a powerful impact on revenue, generating 41% of email orders while accounting for only 2% of all emails sent. One in three people who open an automated email make a purchase, demonstrating the effectiveness of this strategy.
