05

The New Email Marketing Benchmarks

How are prospective students engaging with emails?

When it comes to email effectiveness, it’s important to identify the type of email first, and compare to similar types of emails in order to evaluate success. All too often benchmarks are established for emails in general, which is a very unreliable statistic without being broken down into specific sub-tactics.

That’s why we’ve analyzed and categorized over 875 different emails across dozens of marketing campaigns, including 42 different comm flows with over 225 emails. The data findings from our research point to winning strategies across a variety of email types and tactics. 

Want to know how many emails to send in your comm flows? What about how many invitations for your upcoming virtual info session? And how many different types of CTAs you should include in your emails? 

Take a deep dive into the benchmarks (and benchmark breakers) we reveal hereafter, and learn how to optimize your emails to get more opens, more clicks, and more overall engagement from your prospect communications!

What We're Tracking

Content Promotion Emails

  • Emails promoting program-specific content resources
  • Emails promoting general graduate school/admissions related resources

Triggered “Thank You” Confirmation Emails

  • RMI confirmation emails
  • Event registration confirmation emails
  • Blog subscription confirmation emails
  • Guide download/access confirmation emails
  • Booked meeting confirmation emails

Prospect Nurturing Email Communication Flows

  • Linear drip sequences to prospects who have inquired
  • Behavior-based comm flows
  • Seasonal comm flows
  • General and program-specific comm flows

(NOTE: Event invitation emails are covered in the previous section on “Event Marketing Benchmarks” and intentionally excluded from this section.)

Content Promotion Email Benchmarks

The following table represents the primary metrics for content promotion emails where the primary purpose was to engage prospective students with premium content resources in the format of eBooks and pillar pages. We analyzed over 85 emails that promoted content at all three stages of the student journey (awareness, consideration, and decision), as well as both program-specific and general admissions resources.

Content Promotion Email Benchmarks Email #1 Email #2 Email #3
Average Quantity Sent/Email 3,433 3,497 3,023 4,324
Average # of Opens 1,228 1,157 1,195 1,705
Average Open Rate 35.74% 33.1% 39.5% 39.4%
Average # of Clicks 61 66.7 46.5 79.3
Average Click Rate 1.78% 1.9% 1.5% 1.8%
Average Click-to-Open Rate 4.98% 5.8% 5.5% 4.7%

Summary Analysis: Overall, the variance among open rates and click rates across multiple emails sent promoting specific content resources does not vary significantly enough to warrant limitations in # of emails sent per content piece. While Email #1 tends to get the highest click engagement, the data above supports the theory that prospects respond well to multiple email promotions for content resources.

CTA Impact on Email

Summary Analysis: Including more primary calls-to-action in content promotion emails directly correlates to improved click engagement. Prospects are more likely to click through when these emails include multiple different ways to click through to the primary offer.

Secondary CTA Impact

Summary Analysis: Prospective students are more likely to click through on content promotion emails that include secondary calls-to-action, especially if there are 2 or more secondary CTAs included.

Metrics That Matter for Content Emails:

It pays to send multiple emails promoting content.

The first and third emails promoting the same content resource typically have above-average click-through rates, and overall it pays to send more than one email to keep major content resources in front of your prospective students.

The more (CTAs), the merrier [within reason].

The best benchmark-beating content promotion emails had 4+ primary CTAs and 2+ secondary CTAs, which, combined, can increase your click-through rates by 30-50%!

Program-specific + general content promos = both perform well.

There is no clear winner when it comes to content promotion emails that offer program-specific vs. general content resources. Both types achieve similar open rates and click rates.

Variety is the spice of (email) life.

In nearly all cases, schools varied the copy and length across content promotions emails for the same primary offer. This variance, combined with the consistent high-performing email metrics across emails, demonstrates that it is a higher-performing practice over sending the same (or highly similar) email multiple times.

Smart Marketing: How to Use This Data for Content Promotion Emails

For graduate schools with only a few deep content resources...

  • Consider linking to relevant articles, student videos, or FAQ pages as secondary content offers.
  • Keep the content offerings relevant to the journey-stage of the student. Using a secondary CTA for starting an application might be too much for a student who is in the awareness stage.

For graduate schools with several (5+) deep content resources...

  • Use a resource library page that displays all of your resources and link to it as a secondary content offer.
  • Include related articles that align with your primary content piece in your emails to increase click-throughs.

Triggered ‘Thank You’ Confirmation Email Benchmarks

The following tables look at over 185 examples of various types of triggered ‘Thank You’ confirmation emails, including blog subscriptions, event registrations, premium content downloads/access, booked meetings, and RMI form submissions.

Breakdown of Triggered Emails by Type

All TY Trigger Email Benchmarks Triggered Event Confirmation Emails Content Guide Download Emails Blog Subscription Confirmation Emails RMI Form Submission Emails
Total # of Emails Triggered 26,309 5,711 19,091 530 842
Total # of Opens 13,580 4,299 8,209 351 607
Open Rate 51.6% 75.3% 43.0% 66.2% 72.1%
Total # of Clicks 3,479 1,055 2,153 98 159
Click Rate 13.2% 18.5% 11.3% 18.5% 18.9%
Click-to-Open Rate 25.6% 24.5% 26.2% 27.9% 26.2%

Summary Analysis: Compared to all other types of emails, triggered ‘Thank You’ confirmation emails get the highest open rates and click rates, by far! These emails are critically important opportunities to not just confirm an action but, more importantly, to generate additional engagement by compelling prospects to convert on other related content and actions.

 

Breakdown of Triggered Emails by Primary CTA Quantity

All TY Trigger Email Benchmarks TY Email w/ 1 Primary CTA TY Email w/ 2 Primary CTAs TY Email w/ 3+ Primary CTAs
Average # of Emails Sent per Trigger 142.2 138 142.8 162
Average # of Opens 73.4 56 94.5 82.0
Average Open Rate 51.6% 40.6% 66.2% 50.6%
Average # of Clicks 18.8 12.3 26.5 21.0
Average Click Rate 13.2% 8.9% 18.6% 13%
Average Click-to-Open Rate 25.6% 22.0% 28.0% 25.6%

Summary Analysis: Providing 2 or more primary CTAs is clearly a winning strategy when it comes to triggered ‘Thank You’ confirmation emails, which reinforces the value of offering more than one way for prospects to click through on a primary conversion offer.

Deep Dive Discovery

The top 10 triggered ‘Thank You’ emails (those with the best click-to-open rate) had at least 5 total CTAs!

Comparison of Primary + Secondary Calls-To-Action in Triggered Confirmation Emails

All Triggered Confirmation Emails
Average # of Primary CTAs 1.9
Average # of Secondary CTAs 2.8
% of Triggered Emails w/ 2+ Primary CTAs 54.2%
% of Triggered Emails w/ 3+ Primary CTAs 25.7%
% of Triggered Emails w/ 2+ Secondary CTAs 61%
% of Triggered Emails w/ 3+ Secondary CTAs 45.3%

Metrics That Matter for Triggered 'Thank You' Confirmation Emails:

Secondary CTAs are a must-have.

Triggered confirmation emails that did not include any secondary calls-to-action achieved below-benchmark results, which led to 10% lower open rates and 20% lower clicks rates compared to those that included at least 1 or more secondary CTAs.

Permission-based marketing proves its value.

Prospective students are demonstrating the highest open rates and click rates with triggered confirmation emails because they have opted in to receive them based on an action they took. By sending these emails immediately after prospects take an action, you are capitalizing on the prospect’s attention when their given permission is at its highest level of interest.

Smart Marketing: How to Use This Data for Triggered Confirmation Emails

If your immediate trigger emails are boring and transactional, and are getting below average click-through engagement...

  • Make your emails from a person, instead of your school in general.
  • Change the tone of the emails to sound like they are from a human and not a robot.
  • Add obvious links to the primary purpose of their action, but also…
  • Include secondary links to other related content and/or the most logical next action steps.

If your immediate trigger emails are already awesome and performing above the benchmarks, here are some more advanced tips...

  • Add a 2nd trigger-like email that is delayed 1-4 days after your immediate trigger, and have it remind the prospect of the primary action, but also nudge them more intentionally toward the next action you want them to take (e.g. book a 1:1 meeting).
  • Include a P.S. line in your TY triggers that is not “start your application today!” because that’s stating the obvious and not what you would normally put in a P.S. line!

Prospect Nurturing Email Communication Flow Benchmarks

The following table represents the average performance of email communication flows targeted to prospective students before they have started an application. The data analyzed includes over 40 different comm flows that included anywhere from 3-16 emails per series, and covers both general and program-specific audiences.

Email Comm Flows: General vs. Program-Specific

Prospect Comm Flow Benchmarks General Comm Flows Program-Specific Comm Flows
Average # of Emails per Comm Flow 5.4 4.8 5.6
Average Quantity Sent per Comm Flow 2,007 2,082 1,969
Average # of Opens 700 1,100 500
Average Open Rate 34.9% 52.8% 25.4%
Average # of Clicks 94.4 181 51
Average Click Rate 4.7% 8.7% 2.6%
Average Click-to-Open Rate 13.5% 16.5% 10.2%

Summary Analysis: While general comm flows achieved 2x the open rate and 4x better click rates, this data does not mean program-specific comm flows are less effective than general ones. It’s important to keep in mind that general comm flows have broad appeal to prospects at all stages in their journey and for multiple program interests, and the higher engagement with general comm flows is due to the broad appeal of the general content offers that are more about admissions process, app requirements, and overall institutional brand (student stories, research, etc.).

 

Email Comm Flows by Type

Prospect Comm Flow Benchmarks Post-Inquiry Comm Flows Post-Content Engagement Comm Flows App Deadline Comm Flows
Average # of Emails per Comm Flow 5.4 5.4 3.5 3
Average Quantity Sent per Comm Flow 2,007 2,050 505 1,076
Average # of Opens 700 1,132 186 293
Average Open Rate 34.9% 55.2% 36.8% 27.2%
Average # of Clicks 94.4 203 27 21
Average Click Rate 4.7% 9.9% 5.3% 2.0%
Average Click-to-Open Rate 13.5% 17.9% 14.5% 7.2%

Metrics That Matter for Prospect Nurturing Comm Flow Emails:

More emails is NOT always better.

The average number of emails per comm flow was between 5 and 6. However, comm flows that had 7 or more messages suffered from below-benchmark performance, with 22% lower open rates and 55% lower click rates.

Behavior-based comm flows beat all others.

The top-performing communication flows are ones that are triggered from prospect actions (i.e., their behaviors) rather than prospect status or upcoming deadlines. Note the very low performance of app deadline comm flows vs. post-content or post-inquire comm flows!

Smart Marketing: How to Use This Data for Prospect Nurturing Comm Flows

For small departments with only a few graduate programs…

  • Don’t just offer the obvious drives-to-apply in your comm flows. Find ways to pepper in CTAs that are both program-related and to more general, value-based messages.
  • Measure your comm flow success by engagement across the board, and not just app starts.
  • Don’t over-email your prospects...consider setting up journey-stage specific comm flows that are shorter and more behavior-based rather than status-based.

For large schools or centralized admissions teams with several graduate programs...

  • Don’t put “apply now” in every email...that’s not how to achieve the higher click rates in your general comm flows.
  • Provide easy ways for prospects to find the program-specific information they want, but also be sure to offer more general content on admissions processes, your institutional brand value, or real student stories.
  • Don’t talk to prospects like the massive central department that you are; speak like a human and take a more personal approach!