Inxmail's 2026 Email Marketing Benchmark report, based on 4 billion anonymized emails from 342,400 mailings sent by 1,022 senders, confirms what many marketers have quietly suspected: newsletter open rates are holding steady, but converting that attention into action is getting harder.
The study draws from anonymized sending and performance data collected on the Inxmail platform, covering emails sent across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland from January 1 to December 31, 2025. The report, released in early March 2026, covers open rates, click rates, bounce rates, and effective click rates across 15 industries, providing one of the most detailed European email benchmarks available.
Open Rate Holds at 24.1%, but Engagement Drops
The overall open rate came in at 24.1%, a marginal decline from 24.4% the previous year, meaning roughly one in four newsletters sent in 2025 was opened. On the surface, that looks like stability. The problem sits one layer deeper.
The click rate slipped to 3.3%, and the effective click rate (the ratio of clicks to opens) fell by 1.7 percentage points to 14.8%. That last number is the one marketers should watch. It measures what happens after someone opens the email, and right now, fewer people are doing anything once they do.
According to Inxmail, the data shows that attention and interest in newsletters remain, but translating opens into real interaction is becoming more demanding.
B2C Outperforms B2B, but Volume Tells the Real Story
In a direct B2B vs. B2C comparison, B2C mailings led with a 24.7% open rate against B2B's 22.8%. The sender mix skewed toward B2B, with 57.2% of senders coming from that segment and 42.8% from B2C.
That B2C advantage on open rates aligns with a broader pattern: B2C programs tend to run larger lists and higher volumes, which naturally diversifies performance across campaigns. For B2B teams, the lower open rate partly reflects smaller, more targeted lists rather than weaker content.
Inxmail board member Petra Maelzer put the strategic implication plainly:
"Different target groups need differentiated mailing strategies. If you want to make an impact, you have to think along the customer journey, not according to a fixed mailing plan."
Tourism Leads; Finance Struggles with List Quality
The tourism sector posted the highest open rate at 51.2%, with tourism and culture sectors setting the benchmark for successful newsletters in 2026. High audience intent and strong brand affinity in those industries explain much of the gap. People who sign up for travel newsletters actively want inspiration; that built-in motivation lifts engagement across the board.
On deliverability, marketers performed well overall, with the bounce rate remaining low and stable at 0.4%. However, the risk of inactive addresses increases as list size grows, and financial companies were particularly affected, with a bounce rate of 1.3%, underscoring the importance of consistent list hygiene.
Timing Still Matters: January Is the Strongest Month
January proved to be the most successful month for email performance, with an open rate of 26.4% and a click rate of 4.1%, clearly outperforming all other months. For teams planning 2026 campaign calendars, that is a concrete scheduling signal. Post-holiday re-engagement windows and new-year intent cycles create a receptive inbox environment that simply does not exist in other months.
The report also found that in B2C, performance figures fall as mailing volume increases, confirming that more mailings do not automatically produce more impact.
What This Means for Your Email Strategy
The Inxmail data lands in a broader context where open rate reliability is genuinely contested. Apple Mail Privacy Protection accounted for 49.29% of all email opens as of January 2025, meaning nearly half of every "open" reported by an ESP is Apple's proxy server preloading a tracking pixel, not a human reading the email. The Inxmail report uses median values across its dataset, which makes the figures more resistant to platform-level distortions, but marketers working with US-heavy lists should still treat open rate as a directional signal rather than a precise count.
As Benchmark Email noted, open rate is no longer a precise measurement of human attention; it is a directional signal. The Inxmail effective click rate drop to 14.8% is therefore arguably the more honest headline from this report. It is harder to fake a click than an open. 
For growth teams and marketers evaluating their programs against these benchmarks, three priorities stand out from the data:
- Industry context is not optional. A 22% open rate in B2B may be competitive; the same number in tourism would signal a problem. Inxmail segments its findings across 15 industries, audience types, and send times precisely because cross-industry averages mislead more than they inform.
- List hygiene protects deliverability. Every bounced email damages sender reputation, and keeping bounce rates under 2% directly protects inbox placement. The 0.4% median in this dataset shows it is achievable at scale.
- Effective click rate deserves more attention. A stable open rate paired with a declining effective click rate points to a content or relevance problem, not a subject line problem. More sends will not fix it.
The full Inxmail Email Marketing Benchmark 2026 report runs approximately 70 pages and covers structured analysis across all 15 industries, including trends and audience comparisons. It is available as a free download directly from Inxmail.
