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.
When you layer in strong personalization and segmentation, ROI can climb toward 40-45:1 or more, roughly 2-3x higher than brands that rarely segment. This is because segmentation changes who gets what message, which directly affects conversion rates. Brands using AI-driven segments saw revenue per recipient increase by 18-45% compared to traditional demographic segmentation.
The ROI Story for Your Business
For business owners and growth teams, the ROI case for email remains unmatched. The average ROI of email marketing in 2026 is estimated between $36 and $42 for every $1 spent. For ecommerce specifically, US ecommerce brands see $72 in return for every $1 spent on email, with the US market outperforming the global average by 2x partly due to higher average order values and more mature email programs.
But the returns depend on execution. Automation accounted for just 2% of email sends but drove 30% of revenue, meaning fewer people clicked but those who did were far more likely to buy. Email flows deliver over 3x higher click rates (5.58% vs. 1.69%) and 13x higher placed order rates than campaigns.
What This Means for Your Strategy
The Dutch benchmark points to three clear priorities.
First, fix deliverability and segmentation before worrying about send time. Timing is only a 5-10% improvement; subject lines, content quality, and segmentation matter far more. Build audience segments based on behavior, purchase history, and engagement level. This is the foundation.
Second, layer in send-time optimization after segmentation is solid. Once your segments are clean, tools that analyze each subscriber's individual engagement patterns deliver measurable lifts without requiring content changes.
Third, measure what matters. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection has rendered the traditional open rate a soft metric useful only for detecting deliverability issues. What matters now are the KPIs that reflect real human behavior: click-through rate, click-to-open rate, unsubscribe trends, and the performance of your automated lifecycle flows.
The Dutch data confirms what leading marketers already know: timing and segmentation are no longer nice-to-have optimizations. They're the core of modern email performance. The benchmark gives you clear numbers to test against and clear direction on where to invest next.
