Sign-Up.to releases 2012 UK email benchmark report

This year's report, the fourth of its kind from interactive marketing firm Sign-Up.to, reveals a rise in average email open rates. Across 23 industry sectors the average open rate rose from 18.21% to 18.35% over the last year.

Other results, based on over 900 million permission-based emails sent by UK SMBs include (2011 results in brackets):

- Click-through rate: 2.95% (3.29%)
- Unsubscription rate: 0.15% (0.22%)
- Click-to-open rate: 15.42% (18.07%)
- Unsubscribe-to-open rate: 0.97% (1.2%)

The B2B sales category performed best with an average unique open rate of 26.14%, not far ahead of restaurants with 23.67% and the music industry with 21.46%.

"We put together this benchmark each year because we think it's important that UK small-medium business marketers have a relevant set of averages to work from - other reports we've found are either focused on blue-chip brands or non-UK audiences," writes Matt McNeill, founder and CEO of Sign-Up.to, on his company's blog.

Tags: business to business, email marketing, email metrics, music industry, open rate, small businesss, SMB marketing, unsubscribe rate