Email Benchmark Report 2022

Email Benchmark
Report 2022
How the World Reads 100 Billion Emails
Telecommunication Travel
Banking
E-commerce
Deals
Beauty Edtech
Job portals
Entertainment Foodtech
Global edition
Foreword
Netcore’s Email Benchmark Report 2022 is a very comprehensive yet easy-to-digest
resource for email marketers. There are tons of insights and new information regard-
ing the powerful email trends across industries that I can use to enrich the digital
marketing strategy.
Citra Wikastri
Head Digital Marcom Strategy
AI systems help you learn from past behaviors to shape future actions and create the
most effective solutions to a large number of daily processes in email sending. Having
meaningful data on your customers would help you create highly customized and
relevant campaigns and top-performing segments to increase your deliverability rates.
And Netcore’s Email Benchmark Report 2022, being a study of 100 billion emails, is a
powerful source of such data.
Sergey Syerkin
Senior Deliverability Principal
Netcore’s Email Benchmark Report 2022 provides unique insights into how the critical
email metrics have evolved within two years into the pandemic. It is a wealth of knowl-
edge about advances in AI automation, impact of Apple Mail Privacy Protection, and
several email innovations that happened in 2021. A must-read for email marketers of
all geographies and industries!
Christopher Mariott,
Founder and President
Change is evitable: whether it’s MPP or GDPR, email marketers have learned to adapt.
While MPP is the current change, marketers need to evolve their strategies in smart
ways that look for intent beyond open. In all we do, it’s about discovering intent, and
the signals are everywhere. Netcore’s Email Benchmark Report 2022 points out exactly
where to look for them and enact next-level strategies that grow them into action.
Ryan Phelan
Co-Founder/Managing Director
Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails

Foreword
Sender data and campaign KPIs consistently tell the same story: better results - from
upstream opens to midstream clicks to downstream conversions - come from increas-
ingly refined audience segmentation. Netcore’s Email Benchmark Report 2022 helps
marketers learn and better focus efforts, offers, and exclusives on smaller but more
qualified audiences of actors vs. reactors, plus cut waste.
Karen Talavera
Email & Digital Marketing Strategist, Optimization Expert
I’m a huge fan of industry benchmark reports and the latest Netcore’s Email Bench-
mark Report 2022 does not disappoint! The data is comprehensive, covering
5 geographic regions and 20+ industry verticals. Netcore Cloud’s inclusion of AI/ML
and AMP adoption rates, a primer on BIMI and global metrics on inbox placement and
reputation are very useful – and it’s ‘Action Plan’ at the end provides direction for email
marketers wondering how to leverage the learnings in the report.
Jeanne Jennings
Founder & CEO, Email Optimization Shop
General Manager, Only Influencers
Contents
1 2 3
Message from Key findings from Current shifts in

the Group CEO the report email marketing
4 5 6
Engagement Content Adoption of

metrics metrics advanced
technologies
7 8 9
AMP for emails Global inbox Apple MPP and

and BIMI placement and its implications
reputation metrics
10 11 12
Action plan Summary Methodology and

for 2022 data collection
13
About
Netcore Cloud
1 Message from the
Group CEO
It is time for marketers to thrive amidst the uncertainty.
After the annus-horribilis 2020, the global economy somewhat seemed

to recover in 2021. But many markets still grappled with the new COVID
variants resulting in intermediate lockdowns and home isolation periods.
The pandemic had cast a long shadow in 2021.
2021 proved to be a continuation of 2020 in many respects. Just like

everything else in our lives, email marketing went through an evolution.
Email marketing prevails as one of the most trusted channels at the

marketer’s disposal to connect with customers, convert them into
loyalists, and deliver on the bottom line. Email has taken big leaps and
bounds in 2021 with interactivity, privacy, and multimedia.
Since the last two years of the global pandemic, email has transformed
to become a crucial channel for personalized and conversational
marketing. Providing a great customer experience through emails has
been the preferred approach.
Email marketers reduced their frequency of emails but increased

personalization, smart segmentation, and automation. We observed that
marketers are becoming more AI-savvy as advanced technologies helped
to predict their needs, target audience, and make their job easier.
2021 was a year of growing awareness of user privacy, brand

authenticity, nurturing customer relationships, and optimizing the
customer experience. The traditional ways of marketing campaigns and
sales pitches have no place in today’s digital-first marketing landscape.
The only way for you to have lasting success with your marketing
programs is to keep up with these changing scenarios and master the
email channel. In 2022, your email program needs to not only
communicate but also create tailored experiences for your customers.
Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails 01

As user privacy becomes central with Apple’s MPP regulations, data
attribution will become much deeper in 2022. Collecting zero-party
data and analytics will become crucial for every experience-focused
marketer in 2022.
In today’s rapidly changing digital world, benchmarks of 2 years back

might as well be forgotten. The fallout of pandemic will continue to
shape email activity and consumer behavior. Your ideal customer might
expect different experiences from you within a year.
Therefore, it’s time you reset and measure up!
To help you navigate and thrive during these uncertain times, we have
prepared a special edition Email benchmark report 2022: A study of
100 billion emails.
The report will provide you with an in-depth analysis of emails sent by
our inspiring global customers from 20+ major industries.
This report is full of incredible insights on customer behavior and email

metrics that will help match yours according to global benchmarks. The
report will inform you of the challenges in your industry, actions
needed to solve them, and focus areas to implement solutions.
We hope that this groundbreaking report will be a handy repository to

guide your email strategy as you plan for 2022.
Happy reading, email geeks!

Stay safe and stay connected.
Kalpit Jain
Group CEO
Netcore Cloud

Key findings
2 from the report
We have included data from 22 major industry verticals:
Banking / Investing Healthcare
Ecommerce Insurance
Jobs Foodtech
Travel Media/Publishing
Beauty/Self-Care Dating
Games & Sports People & Society
IT/Services Retail
Entertainment Real Estate
Mobile/Telecommunication Government
Education Deals
Home & Garden Hobbies & Leisure

A note on terminologies
Mutual funds:
A mutual fund is a type of investment in which several individual
investors collectively pool their money to gain returns on the
capital over a specific time. The returns (positive or negative) are
apportioned to the investors in proportion to their individual
contributions to the mutual fund. Mutual fund companies manage
the fund corpus through their fund managers/portfolio managers.
Real estate:
Real estate includes real or physical property, and its business
scope extends to buying and selling property, land, buildings,
roadways, and other physical improvements to the land. It can also
include the rights for the space above and below the land.
Companies and individual agents in the real estate industry help
people, businesses, and investors buy and sell land, properties, and
other assets that fall within the scope.

The retail industry has the
highest deliverability rate of
98.6%.
Southeast Asia has a high

deliverability at 97%.
97%
South East Asia
Banking, retail, ecommerce, and

DMARC
fintech showed increased adoption

of DMARC.
Approve Quarantine Reject
Increased adoption of
interactive emails lead to
better customer experience
and engagement.
India is the highest

adopter of AI in email on
Netcore platforms. ai

Due to the pandemic, verticals
like retail and job portals did
JOB
30 % more volume.
5% adoption of BIMI across our global My Cart
email customers, expected to increase R
My Yoga
significantly
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Stock News

3 Current shifts in
email marketing
2021 was an eventful year for email: advances in AI automation, the
rise of AMP interactivity, and support for BIMI from Gmail and
Yahoo, to name a few.
And then there was Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), leading
to a ‘Skyfall’ moment for marketers. Data deprecation has been
happening for the last few years; for email marketers, it was MPP
that dealt a blow to engagement tracking.
In the past year, marketers had to apply the learnings from 2020 to
their new marketing plans. If 2020 was about building a new digital
machine to communicate effectively with the target audience, 2021
was all about keeping the machine running smoothly.
Customer experience across all touchpoints assumed more

importance than acquisition. Businesses that made the overnight
shift to online relied on email to make the transition smooth with
their customers. Marketing communication in 2021 was marked by
transparency and authenticity; the only option was to be upfront.
Email marketers can take a bow for handling an event like Apple
Mail Privacy Protection in the right spirit and moving forward with
the knowledge gained.
Email is still the most trusted channel for marketers to promote

products, advocate brands, and communicate with the target
audience to get impressive ROI. Through this report, we examine
how several email benchmark metrics have evolved two years into
the pandemic.

We are excited to grow together as we adapt to changing
consumer needs and priorities. We hope you enjoy our insights
and recommendations as you go about strengthening your email
strategy in 2022.

4
Engagement
metrics

4 Engagement metrics
1. Opens, Clicks, and CTOR
Industries Open % Click % CTOR %
Banking/Investing 13.3 0.2 1.4

Ecommerce 11.6 0.3 2.9
Jobs 8.9 0.6 6.3
Travel 13.7 0.3 2.0
Beauty/Self-Care 8.3 0.1 1.4
Games & Sports 6.8 0.1 1.3
IT/Services 22.1 2.2 9.8
Entertainment 13.6 0.4 2.7
Mobile/Telecommunication 11.5 0.3 3.0
Education 10.3 0.4 3.7
Home & Garden 38.5 0.3 0.7
Healthcare 10.6 0.3 2.4
Insurance 19.6 1.3 6.6
Foodtech 14.3 0.2 1.7
Media/Publishing 16.0 0.8 5.3
Dating 27.1 10.6 39.0
People & Society 12.8 0.3 2.5
Retail 11.8 0.1 1.2
Real Estate 14.3 0.6 4.2
Government 14.0 0.6 4.0
Deals 16.2 0.3 2.0
Hobbies & Leisure 25.7 1.1 4.3
The average open rate is 16%, click rate is

1% and click to open rate is 5%.

Trends and practices for improving email engagement
Apple’s mail privacy protection (MPP) policy will render open rates
unreliable in 2022. The inflation of false opens will significantly
impact marketers: they had used ‘opens’ the most to detect
customer engagement. Though open rates were never a solid and
reliable metric to measure customer intent and purchases,
marketers had relied on them for segmentation, engagement, and
deliverability decisions.
Things are set to change now: instead of relying on opens,

marketers will have to use a broader set of metrics like clicks,
subscriber lifetime value, website visits, offline purchases, app
engagement, SMS activity, and more. The levels of engagement will
become the new north star metric to track real customer intent.
Marketers will need to separate Apple and non-Apple audiences to

track their engagement activity and create a reliable focus group of
‘open’ audiences. They will also need to investigate secondary
performance trackers like unsubscribes and spam complaints to
indicate if engagement activity is stable.
Continuing the re-engagement and re-activation programs for

chronic non-opener subscribers will become crucial. Marketers will
have to consider both bot opens and organic opens while
redesigning their email programs.
Interactivity with the audience will become critical with the reduced
importance of the opens metric. Hence, encourage replies, conduct
surveys and polls, and introduce live content to improve inbox
activity.

2. Email Bounces
What is email bounce? How does it affect inboxing?
There are two types of email bounces: hard bounce and soft bounce.
A hard bounce means that there is something wrong with the email
address, and it is a permanent delivery failure. There could be several
reasons, such as the email address being incorrect, invalid, outdated,
or not being used for a very long time.
Unlike hard bounces, soft bounces are temporary in terms of delivery

failure. These could arise from a short-term problem at the recipient
server, the mailbox being full, or the email’s size being considered as
too large.
Investigate the email addresses that are getting bounced and take
action. Avoid using email lists scraped from the web or purchased
from third parties. Having a higher bounce rate than the average will
affect your sender reputation with the email recipients’ MSPs and
damage your inboxing rates in the future.
Expert Comment
Engagement changes from audience to audience & time

to time. So be sure you always check your Engagement
Metrics to measure how these tactics affect your results
which defines your future on Email.
Sriram G
AVP - Email Deliverability
Netcore Cloud
The global average rate for bounce is 0.7%.

3. Churn analysis
What is email churn? Why is it important to
reduce your churn rate?
Email churn refers to the users who either unsubscribe from a mailing
list or turn cold by not responding to your emails anymore. There are
various reasons why a user will unsubscribe from a sender’s mailing
list: high send frequency, irrelevant offers, bad brand perception, etc.
Every subscriber on your mailing list is a potential future customer. If

you don’t act on them and engage them with your email content, they
might move on to your competitors. With a 30-40% yearly list churn
predicted on average, it could turn out to be a huge revenue loss.
The key to reducing email churn is to meaningfully engage with

high-value customers and retain them for a longer time.
The global average rate for unsubscribes

is 0.13%.
Expert Comment
In today’s world, when people have too many choices, it is

important for brands to come up with a communication
strategy that meets their customer’s requirements. One com-
munication fit all doesn’t work anymore, and it will only
result in customer churn. It is important for brands to take a
segmented and personalized approach and meet customer
requirements.
Alok Kumar
AVP - Customer Success
Netcore Cloud

4. Best and worst days to send emails by industry
Industry Best day Worst day
Banking / Mutual Funds / Securities Fri Sun

Beauty / Self-care Wed Sat
Construction Sat Sun
Deals Thu Mon
Ecommerce / E-grocery / E-fashion Mon Sun
Edtech / Education Institutes Wed Fri
Entertainment / Media (OTT) Fri Mon
Foodtech / Delivery Thu Sun
Informational Technology & services Thu Sat
Insurance Fri Thu
Job Portals Thu Tue
Loyalty Program Wed Thu
Media (Publishing) Tue Mon
Medtech Sun Mon
Mobile / Telecommunication Fri Sat
Online Dating Mon Sun
Real Estate Fri Sat
Retail Sat Sun
Travel Fri Tue
In general, emails sent on weekdays get better

engagement as compared to those sent on
weekends.

Expert Comment
Arriving at the best or worst day for sending out email

is a function of the sent time and day experiments
performed by the marketer. Often, we are guilty of
sending communication basis internal approval &
convenience. Doing the same thing over and over again
will never lead to a different result.
Santosh Valecha
Global Head - Customer Success
Netcore Cloud

5
Content
metrics
66.4%
To: sarah@netcorecloud.com
Subject: Hey Sarah, we picked these for you!

Send
To: sarah@netcorecloud.com
Subject: 50% discount offer ends soon

Send

5 Content metrics
1. Subject line length analysis
Subject line length in Open %

characters (including spaces)
up to 10 10.42
10 to 20 11.30
20 to 30 15.40
30 to 40 14.97
40 to 50 13.85
More than 50 12.15
Keep your subject lines short: it is what the mobile-dominant world

prefers. Any subject line that goes over 36 characters in length
(including the spaces) gets automatically truncated in the mobile
display. The viewer gets to see only a broken view of your subject
line – cut off at the 37th character – leading to incomplete and
unappealing information.
The optimum subject line length that has

received the highest open rates is 30-35
characters with spaces.

6
Adoption of
AI/ML
Technologies
AI

Adoption of AI/ML
6 Technologies
1. Adoption of AI technology across audience
selection, content optimization, channel
preference, and email delivery.
Did not adopt AI Adopted AI
49%
51%
49% of our customers have adopted to one or more of the above

technologies, 51% are yet to adopt.
% of AI/ML adoption as seen in Netcore Clients
Banking / Mutual Funds / Securities

Deals
Ecommerce / E-grocery / E-fashion
Edtech / Education institutes
Entertainment / Media (OTT)
Foodtech / Delivery
Informational Technology & Services
Job Portals
Media (Publishing)
Medtech
Mobile / Telecommunication
Retail
Travel
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%

What is send time optimization? What are its benefits?
Send time optimization (STO) delivers email campaigns to users when
they are most likely to check their inboxes. It is an AI-powered feature
that helps the email platform learn from past engagement behavior to
determine the best time to target specific users for getting the best engagement.
If your campaign lands on the top of users’ inbox whenever they open
it, engagement from inactive segments will likely increase. The use of
STO has dual benefits: a gradual rise in engagement and an increase
in the brand equity inside the user’s inbox.
2. Send Time Optimization

Insights on the adoption of send time optimization
• our
In 2021, we saw our clients from ten different industries use
STO feature compared to just one in 2020. Optimizing
send time has become a focal point for companies to time
their emails to perfection.
• engagement
Except for a few cases where STO has under-delivered
results, we saw the majority of the brands
benefiting with improved open rates.
• services
We witnessed double the open rates with STO for the IT
and travel companies.
• benefited
The banking and media over-the-top (OTT) sectors have also
from an uplift in their open rates due to the use of STO.
• performance
The STO algorithms are being adjusted with other
signals like clicks for more accuracy in
reporting in a post-privacy world.
• feature
We hope to see other industry verticals test out the STO
on our platform in the coming year and see the
impact send time optimization will make on their email
marketing campaigns.

3. Subject line optimization (SLO)
Adoption % of SLO vs. industry as seen in Netcore Clients

Adoption % of SLO
Job Portals
Travel
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
Industry
What is subject line optimization (SLO)? What are

its benefits?
SLO is an AI feature used to test, analyze, and enhance the subject

lines to get the highest response from the recipients.
To build an intimate connection with the recipient, SLO helps personalize

your subject lines with name, transaction history, location, past
interaction, recommended products, important dates, etc. The subject
line is the only chance of convincing your recipient that your email is
worth reading. Getting it right makes all the difference.
The use of SLO helps improve your engagement and subscriber

affinity; these, in turn, will improve your sales and ROI from email. Due
to the high personalization and relevant subject lines, it also helps
decrease your unsubscribe rate. SLO improves email click-through
rates that can positively impact your goals, like increasing website
traffic, signups, and more.

Insights on the adoption of SLO
• adoption
We have seen a huge uptick in the highest region-wise
of SLO across industry verticals (out of a total of 19
industries analyzed, clients of 15 industries adopted SLO)
within the last 12 months.
• went
The lowest SLO adoption is seen in the travel sector that
through an economic downturn due to the
pandemic-related lockdowns.

7
AMP for
emails and
BIMI

7 AMP for emails and BIMI
1. AMP for emails
What is AMP for email? What are its benefits?
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for emails is a technology developed
by Google to add interactivity to emails. It lets customers perform
different actions like writing reviews, booking flights, ordering
products, answering a survey, and much more – all within the email.
AMP for email enables your customers to skip navigating out to

external pages and complete all actions within the inbox. It provides
opportunities for marketers to send interactive emails and increase
the dwell time of customers inside the inbox. As a result, subscriber
engagement significantly improves within the email.
AMP for emails is a secure technology that limits the use of

third-party data and disallows ad components inside its functionality.
Ecommerce marketers can apply use cases to let customers buy their
products within the email. For example, customers can add items to
the shopping cart without switching to the online store.
The top 5 industries that have adopted

AMP interactive emails
11.1%
Media (Publishing)
33.3%
Banking 11.1%
Gaming
33.3%
Ecommerce
11.1%
Travel

Insights from the adoption of AMP for emails
• have
Our data shows that the banking and ecommerce industries
been the highest adopters of AMP technology in 2021.
• surveys
The banking industry has used AMP for emails to create engaging
and KYC forms to be answered within the email. In
comparison, ecommerce marketers are using AMP for abandoned
carts, shopping carts, and review use cases that have provided
promising results.
• the
Gaming, travel, and media (publishing) industries make up
remaining adopters.
• industries
With fewer companies dabbling in interactivity, other
have a vast potential to send dynamic emails and
boost their customer loyalty by using AMP.
• will
With our soon-to-be-launched AMP email editor, marketers
find it really easy to create interactive and dynamic
content to wow their customers.
Using AMP interactive emails to cut down

the steps in customer journey can lead to
higher conversions.

2. The BIMI standard
What is the BIMI standard? What are its benefits?
The BIMI (Brand Indicators for message identification) is an email

standard that allows brands to display authenticated emails with
certified logos inside the inbox. It requires strong authentication as a
pre-requisite from the mailbox providers (enforced DMARC with reject
policy). By enabling the BIMI standard, companies can have greater
control over the logos displayed in their emails.
According to a Redsift study, showing a logo on an email can increase

open rates by 39%, buying behavior by 32%, and brand recall by as
much as 120%. Enabling BIMI has two-fold benefits: firstly, BIMI
creates an added layer of authentication to improve credibility and
trust with your email subscribers. It lets the users know that the
emails are from a genuine source and not fake.
The second benefit is the positive branding due to the logo getting
displayed right inside your subscribers’ inboxes. Yahoo!, Netscape,
AOL, and Gmail fully support the BIMI standard, with other mailbox
providers considering support in the coming year.
Insights on BIMI adoption
Our data shows that 5% of companies have enabled the BIMI

standard. Thus, BIMI for emails is still at the nascent stage of
adoption and offers a vast potential for other brands to start
displaying their authenticated logos inside the inbox.

Expert Comment
Implementing solutions like AMP for email and BIMI

provide additional functionality, interactivity, and branding
opportunities for marketers. Adding a flip book,
satisfaction score, or a feedback form to emails will give
customers an entirely new way to engage with messages.
Pair that with the additional security of DMARC and the
increased brand recognition provided by implementing
BIMI to provide a positive consumer experience directly
from the inbox. More engagement leads to better
deliverability, which leads to a better all-round experience
for customers and brands.
Matthew Vernhout
VP - Deliverability
Netcore Cloud

8
Global inbox
placement and
reputation
metrics

Global inbox placement
8 and reputation metrics
1. Inboxing by industry
Banking/Mutual Funds/Securities
Beauty/Self-care
Real Estate
Deals
Ecommerce / E-grocery/ E-fashion
Education
Entertainment/Media
Foodtech / Delivery
Industry
Informational Technology/Services
Insurance
Job Portals
Loyalty Program
Medtech
Online Dating
Retail
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
Average inboxing %
The retail industry has the highest

inboxing of all with 98.6% of emails landing
in inboxes.

Insights from inbox placement by industry verticals
• ofThe98.6%.
retail industry has the highest average deliverability rate
More retail brands are utilizing Netcore’s
AI-powered email delivery to affect their email deliverability
positively.
• food
Following closely with the second-highest deliverability is the
tech/ food delivery industry with 98%. Foodtech grew
positively during 2021 with increased MAUs due to
intermittent lockdowns and restrictions on social mobility.
• with
Netcore’s AI-powered email delivery platform, supported
CRED consulting, has attributed to an increase in the
inbox placement rate by 25-35% in 2021.
• deliverability
Entertainment/media companies have the lowest
with an average of 77%. A high frequency of
emails combined with sending regional content seems to
have affected their inbox placement. MSPs have been
observed to have some spam filters set for regional content.
• contributing
The rest of the industries show good deliverability (>90%),
to an increased readership of these emails.

2. Region-based inbox placement:
North America, Europe, Africa, India, Southeast Asia –
comparative percentage of inboxing
North America
Europe
Region
Africa
India
South East Asia
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
Percentage of inboxing
Africa boasts the highest overall

deliverability of 98% among all mailbox
providers. Next is Southeast Asia with 97%.
Insights from region-based inbox placement rate (IPR) trends
• businesses
Due to the intermittent lockdowns, ecommerce/e-grocery
enjoyed increased customer engagement and
deliverability.
• with
We see a rising inboxing trend in the North American region,
email deliverability of 91% across industries.

• with
The highest IPR of 98.3% is observed in the African region
the most high-volume senders being banks and other
financial institutions.
• adopted
Many companies from the Southeast Asia region have
AI in email delivery and are strict on their
permission marketing policies. It has contributed
significantly to their inbox placement.
• customers
Companies' advanced segmentation practices to retain loyal
have created consistent engagement and
improved deliverability.
• amongst
We see the lowest deliverability in the European region
the group, with 88.7%.
• like
Gmail is not the dominant player; other mailbox providers
Apple Mail, Yahoo, and Outlook have a major share of
email accounts.
• flawless
The presence of corporate mailboxes continues to prevent
inboxing, as every mailbox provider has its own set
of anti-spam algorithms to navigate.
• toGlobally, the deliverability has increased as email continues

drive growth amid the uncertainty for brands across the
industries.
• months,
With Apple MPP making open data unreliable in the coming
senders will have to rely on good practices to
ensure sustained high deliverability.
• advanced
MSPs like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook regularly updated their
spam filters in 2021. Our CRED consultants
strategized with our global clients on good sending
practices, which have positively affected deliverability.

3. Email authentication by industry
Percentage adoption of DMARC by industry
Ecommerce / E-grocery/ E-fashion
Banking/Mutual Funds/Securities
Beauty/Self-care
Education
Job Portals
Online Dating
Medtech
Entertainment / Media over-the-top (OTT) /

Media Publishing
Insurance
Real Estate
Retail
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
Note: Brands having monthly email volume greater than 1 million were considered.
The average DMARC adoption across industries

is around 50%.

Why should you implement email authentication?
Email authentication refers to the technical standards used to make

email verification possible. The most common authentication
protocols are SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. These protocols allow
recipients to verify that the email has come from a genuine sender.
Email authentication is often used to block harmful spam and

fraudulent content; it also helps avoid phishing, spoofing, and other
cybercrime. Using email authentication builds trust with your
recipients and makes them feel safe interacting with your content.
DMARC provides the sole control of the domain with the owner. The
DMARC aggregate reports also make a sender aware if their domain is
spoofed or misused. Besides, it sends positive signals to mailbox
providers that improve inbox engagement and deliverability.
Insights on email authentication by industry
• adoption
Our data shows that the insurance industry has the lowest
rate for basic authentication protocols. The
companies in this sector need to implement DMARC
verification to improve their inboxing and customer trust.
• industries
Loyalty programs, foodtech, and mobile telecommunication
have poor DMARC adoption.
• from
The use of shared setups also prevents many companies
enabling DKIM and DMARC.
• industries
Only travel/tourism, job portals, online dating, and real estate
can boast a 100% DMARC adoption.

• adoption
Ecommerce and e-grocery companies need to improve their
of DMARC standards as an increased dependency
from consumers makes them vulnerable to phishing attacks.
• and
Despite sending sensitive customer communication, banking
securities brands do not have a complete adoption of
DMARC. It could be risky for them to communicate safely
with customers, thus hampering customer relationships.
4. Average spam complaint rate by industry

Media (OTT)
Job Portals
Travel
Beauty / Self-care
Medtech
Media (Publishing)
Online Dating
Industry
Deals
Insurance
Retail
Loyalty Program
Real Estate
Construction
Informational Technology & Services
Foodtech / Delivery
0.00% 0.01% 0.02% 0.03%
Average spam complaint rate
Note: Average spam complaint rate is according to the statistics we see on Google Postmaster
for high volume senders across all industries and regions.

Insights on average spam complaint rate by industry
• the
Online dating and the media over-the-top (OTT) industry has
highest spam complaints, with almost 30 emails every
10000 emails sent. The online dating industry has a better
performance on trigger-type emails, and perhaps their
promotional emails resonate better with the audience.
• frequency
The media over-the-top (OTT) industry has increased its
since the lockdown period, resulting in some
audiences getting overwhelmed with too many emails sent.
• position
Job portals and the travel industry also feature in the third
with 14 emails getting complaints on Gmail on an
average for every 10000 emails sent.
• Resignation”
Job portals have upped their send frequency, with the “Great
happening worldwide. If the emails are not
personalized to individual subscribers, they are likely to get
complained or unsubscribed.
• due
The insurance industry has the lowest spam rate. It can be
to the segmentation targeting that insurance companies
do to select their specific audience.
• part
Segmentation of audience and tailored content play a crucial
in reducing spam complaints.
• determining
Since Gmail is highly sensitive to spam complaints in
inbox placement, they play a significant role in
sustaining deliverability.

Expert Comment
Email authentication is the sure-shot way to provide safety,

avoid forgery, and create a sense of legitimacy. It is part of
the technical process of any email that verifies the
authenticity of an email sender. Fraudulent processes like
phishing activities are usually identified and blocked
through careful monitoring of the email authentication
segments like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
Evita D’Cunha
AVP - Deliverability (Europe & US)
Netcore Cloud

9 What is Apple MPP and
what are its implications?
Apple launched Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) feature on September 20,
2021. MPP will prefetch and cache images in emails for the Apple Mail
audience who enables this feature. Then, Apple will preload your
message content before sending it to the user’s inbox. Even if the
recipient hasn’t opened the emails, the mail app’s pre-fetching of the
images will signal to an email service provider that an open has
occurred.
As a result, marketers will see inflated open rates and will not be able to
correctly decipher which recipient opened the email, where, and when.
What did we see? Our data analysis.

We started more closely analyzing the open rates of the users who
opted for MPP and those who did not.
The highest false open

Month (on any single day)
received for MPP users
October 21.7%
November 37.6%
December 48.9%
January 60.6%
February* 56.8%
(Partial month data*)

nonApple AVG MPP AVG iPhone AVG
100
80.5
72.3
75 66.7
53.8
51.3
50 43.9
46.8
31.0
24.0
25
14.3
10.5 8.4
2.5 5.1 3.7 2.4 2.4 2.0
0.6
0
31-08-2021 Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb
Date
nonApple AVG = all devices that are not running iOS/macOS – could be
android, windows, or something else but not apple.
MPP AVG = A daily average of MPP opens
iPhone AVG = iOS devices that have not enabled or cannot enable MPP
The avg MPP opens over a month for Feb touches 46.8% which is a
steady increase of close to 200% since the launch of Apple MPP.
Conclusions and Suggestions
The data privacy changes by Apple are impacting marketers on multiple

fronts, from ad targeting to email performance reporting. Therefore, it is
crucial to measure the impact on your email marketing program.
• 15Emailusersmarketers need to follow a smart strategy to segment Apple iOS

separately and analyze their performance metrics differently.
For example, use click activity as the primary indicator for engagement.
• non-iOS
Create a reliable focus segment for analyzing the open rates of
15 users (i.e., non-Apple users, Apple users below the iOS 15
version, or Apple iOS 15 users who do not use Apple mail).

• click-through
Include and emphasize other performance metrics instead, such as
rate, conversion rate, unsubscribe rate, bounce rate, etc.,
in your reporting.
• details
Engage with users through feedback, preferences, and by asking for
on the type of content they would like to receive.
• when
Revisit your automated journeys and trigger emails that get activated
someone opens an email.
• campaign
Evaluate current tracking for open rates and update the A/B split
winners, deliverability monitoring, send time optimization,
recipient location, etc.
• more
Develop short and crisp emails called Ems (Email Micron Series) with
prominent calls to action.
• and
Review the definition and condition for targeting “unengaged users”
managing their data.
As privacy practices continue to evolve, email marketers will need to

continue evolving their success measurements and experiment with new
email technologies to stay relevant to their subscribers.

10 Action plan for 2022
Last year has been transformational for email in many ways
- Increased email reach outs by brands, Adoption of
interactive email by brands, Apple's MPP, etc. have shaken
up the email world and brands are forced to rethink their
email strategies.
Crowded inboxes and limited attention span means that

brands fight for user attention. Any brand carrying better
recall, personalization, a connected story with the user gets
better engagement. Engagement translates to conversion
and conversion to better ROI.
Like Apple MPP, Gmail and Yahoo are working on ways to

protect user privacy. As a result, opens are on a path to
become less relevant. Brands forever believed that opens
are a proxy measure for health of their email program. With
that going away, brands need better visibility to understand
the health of their email program. This triggers a new breed
of metrics for marketers. There will be an increased need
for email intelligence outside of regular ESP offering.
Therefore, I think email marketing in 2022 is going to be

about three key trends - Storytelling, Visibility, and
Interactive email.
Chaitanya Chinta
Global Head - Email Business
Netcore Cloud

What you should start doing in 2022
• you
With Apple MPP expected to hit your open performance hard in 2022,
should start looking at other metrics like clicks for measuring your
program.
• Start segmenting Apple users with your ESP and treat them differently.
• signs
With unreliable open feedback from customers, you should find visible
of interaction like replies, forwards via polls, and surveys that will
be essential to measure engagement levels.
• content.
Start telling stories and weaving narratives through your email
They will prove more effective when coupled with interaction
tech like AMP for emails.
• first-party
Collecting zero-party data will assume huge importance in 2022, as the
data becomes unreliable to make marketing decisions.
• preferences
Progressively profile your customers and get them to share their
and other details comfortably via preference centers,
signup forms, and social media.
What you need to keep doing in 2022
• segmenting,
Embracing AI-powered tools for making smart decisions with
predicting churn, selecting subject lines, and delivering
emails to create experience-driven email programs.
• marketing
Paying attention to user privacy and keeping it central for creating
campaigns.
• ones.
Considering regional privacy guidelines aside from the international

11 Summary
Adapting to uncertainty will be an important trait every marketer will
have to possess in 2022. The pandemic will continue to shape the
marketing narrative and further alter consumer behavior.
As we can see from the report findings, AI in email and interactive

content are set to feature heavily in email marketing strategies. Adoption
of new technologies and standards like BIMI and AMP are on the rise.
Email marketing will become more personalized, socially driven,

intelligent, and experiential in the next couple of years than before. We
are excited to see what email marketers do with their resources to pave
the way forward.
Introducing Email 2.0: Making Email Cool Again!

Email 2.0 shifts the inbox paradigm from delete to delight, creating a
habit revolution that improves customer lifetime value, and increases
the ROI. The innovative elements in email 2.0 reduce acquisition costs,
solve for attention recession, gather zero-first party data, and drive
profitable growth.
Email 2.0 has the power to deliver extraordinary customer experiences

and exceptional business outcomes. Email 2.0 makes the sent seen and
the seen actioned, it is the future of profitable engagement with the
customers.

Expert Comment
Email has evolved from a personal tool to one that helps

businesses connect with their customers and share content.
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), Ems (short, informative,
sequenced, daily mails), Atomic Rewards (micro-incentives for
actions), and Progency (a partnership for business outcomes
on a performance basis) are what will radically alter the way
brands communicate with customers in the future.
These innovations are laying the foundation at Netcore for

Email 2.0, which will take the ROI to even greater heights.
Rajesh Jain
Founder and Managing Director
Netcore Cloud

Methodology and
12 data collection
The Netcore Cloud team studied the marketing email campaigns sent
from its Customer Engagement and Experience (CEE) and Email API
platforms by companies using email delivery, campaign management,
and automation solutions. The engagement results are captured on the
dashboards of these platforms to make them visible to our customers.
The inbox placement results are generated from proprietary in-house

tools which contain seed addresses to measure deliverability of the
campaigns that were sent to customers globally.
The report has been driven by the Product Marketing, Deliverability

Experts, Data Analytics, and Developer teams of Netcore Cloud.
We have included data from 20+ major industry verticals.
Some relevant sectors have been clubbed together and considered one
industry, e.g., banks, mutual funds, and securities / entertainment, media
publishing, and media OTT / real estate and construction, for simplified
grouping and broader insights. Each of the brands analyzed in the report
sends at least 10 million emails per month, providing us with sizable
sample data.

Send your emails at the right time
to the right customer for the
maximum engagement
Reach the customers’ inbox every

time using our homegrown AI-powered
email platform
15 billion emails/month, a blazing

speed of 3 seconds, and a robust 95%
inbox placement
Why choose Leaders in transactional email space
Netcore and the worlds' most recommended

ESP as per G2.com
for email?
Received the highest overall customer

rating' Choice in the 2021 Gartner Peer
Insights 'Voice of the Customer' Report
750+ strong team spread across 12

countries (India, USA, Germany, and the
others in SEA)
5000+ paying customers include Canon, Disney

Hotstar, SBI, MakeMyTrip, Oyo, Nexxt, Puma,
Flipkart, Dream11, and more
#ForTheLoveOfEmails
Netcore’s futuristic
innovations in email:
proven customer successes
through AI and Email 2.0
AI-based segmentation
increases their engagement by 2.5X in partnership
with Netcore Cloud.
drives 7x open rates, 1.7x click rates, and 1.8x

monthly openers with help from Netcore Cloud.
AI-based send time optimization (STO)
drives a 121% increase in click rates and 30% increase

in open rates with Netcore Cloud’s email offerings.
Malaysia’s top achieves 5X click rates and 3x open rates in

telecom brand consultation with Netcore Cloud.
sees a 50% increase in click rates and a 30% increase

in open rates using Netcore Cloud’s email API/services.
Email 2.0 components: Ems and Atomics Rewards

increases its CTOR by 3X using Netcore Cloud’s Ems and
Atomic Rewards.
Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails

Brands that trust us
#ForTheLoveOfEmails
www.netcorecloud.com
Sky ocket your
Email Marketing ROI
Delivering Billions of Emails per Month at 3 seconds Lightning Fast Speed
Netcore Cloud Pvt Ltd

182C-102 500 7th Avenue, New York, NY 10018
hello@netcorecloud.com
www.netcorecloud.com
#ForTheLoveOfEmails

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Email Benchmark

Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails

Message from Key ﬁndings from Current shifts in

Engagement Content Adoption of

AMP for emails Global inbox Apple MPP and

Action plan Summary Methodology and

After the annus-horribilis 2020, the global economy somewhat seemed

The pandemic had cast a long shadow in 2021.

2021 proved to be a continuation of 2020 in many respects. Just like

Email marketing prevails as one of the most trusted channels at the

Email marketers reduced their frequency of emails but increased

2021 was a year of growing awareness of user privacy, brand

Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails 01

In today’s rapidly changing digital world, benchmarks of 2 years back

Therefore, it’s time you reset and measure up!

This report is full of incredible insights on customer behavior and email

We hope that this groundbreaking report will be a handy repository to

Happy reading, email geeks!

Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails 02

Banking / Investing Healthcare

Games & Sports People & Society

Entertainment Real Estate

Home & Garden Hobbies & Leisure

Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails 03

Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails 04

Southeast Asia has a high

Banking, retail, ecommerce, and

ﬁntech showed increased adoption

India is the highest

Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails 05

5% adoption of BIMI across our global My Cart

email customers, expected to increase R

Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails 06

Customer experience across all touchpoints assumed more

Email is still the most trusted channel for marketers to promote

Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails 07

Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails 08

Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails 09

Industries Open % Click % CTOR %

Banking/Investing 13.3 0.2 1.4

The average open rate is 16%, click rate is

Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails 10

Things are set to change now: instead of relying on opens,

Marketers will need to separate Apple and non-Apple audiences to

Continuing the re-engagement and re-activation programs for

Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails 11

Unlike hard bounces, soft bounces are temporary in terms of delivery

Engagement changes from audience to audience & time

The global average rate for bounce is 0.7%.

Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails 12

Every subscriber on your mailing list is a potential future customer. If

The key to reducing email churn is to meaningfully engage with

The global average rate for unsubscribes

In today’s world, when people have too many choices, it is

Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails 13

Industry Best day Worst day

Banking / Mutual Funds / Securities Fri Sun

In general, emails sent on weekdays get better

Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails 14

Arriving at the best or worst day for sending out email

Email Benchmark Report 2022 #ForTheLoveOfEmails 15

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