Email marketing statistics: 48 you can use

Email marketing is still one of the most dependable channels a business can own. But a lot of the email statistics floating around the web are years old, recycled from one roundup to the next, or based on open rates that no longer mean what they used to.

This list is different. We rebuilt it for 2026 using recent primary research from sources like Litmus, Validity, Brevo, Omnisend, McKinsey and the Content Marketing Institute. Where a figure is older, we say so. And because Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates opens, we put the emphasis on clicks and conversions.

Email reach and usage

1. About 376 billion emails were sent and received every day in 2025, a figure projected to reach 424 billion in 2026. (Statista)
2. Global email users were expected to reach 4.6 billion by 2025, up from about 4 billion in 2020. (Statista)
3. Apple accounted for 62.26% of tracked email opens in July 2026, the largest share of any email client. This figure includes Mail Privacy Protection opens. (Litmus)
4. Gmail ranked second with 27.03% of opens, meaning Apple and Gmail together account for nearly 90% of all opens. (Litmus)
5. Desktop Outlook held 5.83% of opens, still enough that rendering in Outlook matters for many B2B lists. (Litmus)

Email marketing ROI

6. 30% of marketing leaders report earning $36 to $50 for every $1 spent on email. (Litmus)
7. Another 35% earn $10 to $36 for every $1 spent. (Litmus)
8. 5% of marketing leaders see returns above $50 per $1 spent. (Litmus)
9. 21% of companies don't measure email ROI at all, down from 36% in 2023. (Litmus)
10. Retail, ecommerce and consumer goods brands reported the highest industry ROI at 45:1, based on Litmus's 2020 survey of more than 2,000 professionals. (Litmus)
11. Teams with advanced AI integration are 75% more likely to achieve email ROI above 45:1. (Litmus State of Email 2026)

Want to know where your own program lands? Our guide to calculating email marketing ROI walks through the math.

Click, open and unsubscribe benchmarks

Brevo's 2026 benchmark draws on more than 175,000 active customers sending in 2025. Here is the snapshot:

12. The average email click-through rate is 2.27% of recipients. (Brevo)
13. The top 10% of senders earn a 5.22% click-through rate, more than double the average. (Brevo)
14. Government and public administration had the highest click-through rate of any industry at 3.53%. (Brevo)
15. Banking and financial services had the lowest click-through rate at 1.87%. (Brevo)
16. Apple Mail Privacy Protection adds about 13 percentage points to the average open rate: 20.73% without machine opens versus 33.87% with them. (Brevo)
17. Even excluding machine opens, the top 10% of senders reach a 44.02% open rate. (Brevo)
18. The average unsubscribe rate is 0.46%, while top performers keep it to 0.05%. (Brevo)
19. Overall email click rates declined in 2025, yet click-to-conversion rose 53%, from 5.9% to 9%. Fewer clicks are happening, but the ones that do are more likely to turn into sales. (Omnisend)

If your click rate trails these benchmarks, start with our 6 tips to increase your email click rates.

Automation outperforms one-off campaigns

20. Automated and transactional emails average a 7.39% click-through rate, more than three times the 2.27% average for campaigns. (Brevo)
21. Automated emails average a 30.63% open rate. (Brevo)
22. Automations made up about 2% of email sends but drove about 30% of email-driven revenue in 2025. (Omnisend)
23. Automated messages convert at roughly 19 times the rate of campaigns. (Omnisend)
24. Automations earned $2.87 per send compared with $0.18 for scheduled campaigns, about 16 times more. (Omnisend)
25. Automated emails get about six times stronger click engagement than campaigns. (Omnisend)
26. Back-in-stock emails had the highest conversion rate of any automation type at 6.46%. (Omnisend)

DailyStory's automation lets you build welcome series, birthday messages and win-back campaigns once and let them run.

Personalization and segmentation

27. 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. (McKinsey)
28. 76% of consumers get frustrated when personalization doesn't happen. (McKinsey)
29. Personalization most often drives a 10% to 15% revenue lift, with company-specific results ranging from 5% to 25%. (McKinsey)
30. Faster-growing companies get 40% more of their revenue from personalization than slower-growing peers. (McKinsey)
31. Among B2B organizations that personalize content, 85% personalize their email campaigns, making email the most common place to personalize. (Content Marketing Institute)

See how segmentation and personalized email marketing work together to lift clicks.

What consumers want from brand email

32. 75.4% of consumers name email as their preferred channel for promotional messages from brands. (Sinch Mailgun)
33. 74% prefer email for transactional messages such as receipts and shipping updates. (Sinch Mailgun)
34. By comparison, 19.2% prefer SMS for promotions and 27.8% prefer SMS for transactional messages. (Sinch Mailgun)
35. 63% of consumers receive more than 10 brand emails every day. (Sinch Mailgun)
36. Getting too many emails is the top reason people unsubscribe, cited by nearly 20% of consumers. (Sinch Mailgun)
37. 19.9% of consumers would mark an unsolicited email as spam. (Sinch Mailgun)

Deliverability and authentication

Source: Validity 2026 Email Deliverability Benchmark, 2025 data.

38. The global average inbox placement rate was 87.2% in 2025, up 3.7% year over year. (Validity)
39. 6.6% of legitimate email landed in spam and 6.1% went missing entirely, so roughly 1 in 8 messages never reached the inbox. (Validity)
40. Gmail had the highest inbox placement of any major provider at 89.8%. (Validity)
41. Microsoft was the hardest to reach, with 77.4% inbox placement and 15.1% of mail sent to spam. (Validity)
42. North America's inbox placement rate was 86.7%, slightly below the global average. (Validity)
43. Since May 5, 2025, Microsoft rejects mail from senders of 5,000+ daily messages to Outlook.com, Hotmail and Live addresses if it fails SPF, DKIM and DMARC requirements, joining Gmail and Yahoo. (dmarcian)
44. 1 in 10 senders admit to buying lists or scraping the web for contacts in the past two years, a practice that damages sender reputation. (Sinch Mailgun)

Learn more about DMARC, the Gmail and Yahoo inbox protection rules, and 10 tips to improve deliverability.

AI and B2B email

45. 28% of email marketers describe their AI use as advanced and 34% as moderate. Only 5% aren't using AI at all. (Litmus State of Email 2026, via MediaPost)
46. 78% of teams now produce and deploy an email in three days or less. In 2024, 62% needed two weeks or longer. (Litmus State of Email 2026)
47. 95% of B2B marketers say their organizations use AI-powered applications, and 36% use or are implementing AI email tools for optimization and personalization. (Content Marketing Institute)
48. B2B marketers rank email newsletters as the second most effective channel for thought leadership (54%), behind only LinkedIn (76%). (Content Marketing Institute)

Key takeaways

• Measure clicks and conversions. Opens are inflated by privacy features, but clicks show real intent.
• Automate your best messages. Automated emails earn three times the click rate and many times the revenue per send.
• Segment and personalize. Consumers expect it, and it consistently lifts revenue.
• Protect deliverability. About 1 in 8 legitimate emails never reach the inbox, and Microsoft, Gmail and Yahoo all enforce authentication.
• Respect frequency. Too many emails is the top reason people unsubscribe.

Frequently asked questions

Ready to put these numbers to work? Read our anatomy of an effective marketing email, download the free Email Marketing 101 guide, or request a demo to see how DailyStory tracks clicks and conversions across every campaign.