Email success no longer depends on great content alone. A new Dutch benchmark reveals that success in the inbox increasingly depends on send timing and targeted segmentation rather than content alone. The Dutch Email Marketing Benchmark 2026, based on 13.4 billion emails, offers detailed insight into what drives performance for Dutch marketers, and the findings matter for anyone serious about improving email ROI.
Open and Click Rates in 2026
The average open rate in 2025 reached 46.46%, a slight increase from 44.93% a year earlier. The average click rate for 2025 came in at 5.57%. These Dutch figures run higher than many global benchmarks, where the median email open rate across 3.6 million campaigns was 43.46% and the average email click rate across all campaigns was 2.09%. The gap suggests that Dutch marketers with mature programs are outpacing global averages, likely because they've already begun investing in segmentation and timing.
But here's the critical insight: open rates alone no longer tell the real story. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection automatically preloads email content and images for Apple Mail users, even if they never actually open the email. This means click rate is currently the most accurate indicator of email newsletter engagement since it is not reliant on tracking opens.
Send Timing Drives Real Performance Differences
In B2B campaigns, the click rate in the early morning (07:00 uur) is significantly higher than in the evening, while in B2C the opposite is true: evening campaigns perform better. This isn't minor variation. A simple adjustment, such as region-based send windows, can lift opens by 12-15%.
The timing advantage compounds when combined with AI. Predictive send-time optimization (determining the ideal send time per individual recipient) increases open rate by 23% and CTR by 17%. However, send-time optimization typically lifts open rates by a few percentage points, not tens of percentage points, but at scale, across a list of hundreds of thousands, those few percentage points translate into significant additional opens, clicks, and conversions.
Segmentation Drives Revenue, Not Just Engagement
Send timing moves the needle on engagement. Segmentation moves the needle on revenue. Segmented email campaigns generate 30% more opens and 50% more click-throughs than non-segmented campaigns. More important still, segmented campaigns generate 760% more revenue than non-segmented sends.
