After hosting our 2025 Benchmark webinars, we gathered the audience questions that we didn’t have time to answer in the live sessions. Explore below to see our experts’ insights into some of the most top-of-mind questions we received.

And, if you haven’t already, check out the on-demand replay of the North America and the UK & Europe sessions, as well as the full 2025 Marketing benchmark report to get access to all the data and recommendations.  

What are the best strategies to improve email engagement? 

• Craft engaging subject lines and test variations for different audiences 
• Optimize your email send timing 
• Segment your audience to enable better personalization  
• Design for a mobile-first experience 
• Use clear, compelling CTAs 
• Re-engage inactive subscribers and suppress those who don’t engage  
• Leverage automation triggers  
• Have a strong content and contact strategy 
• Incorporate interactive content opportunities such as GIFs, videos, or gamification.  

What is the guidance around having several CTA buttons in an email, is it recommended? Can too many links cause the email to be flagged as spam or junk? 

Multiple CTAs can be helpful on mobile to avoid having to scroll. A good approach is to have a mix of CTAs, such as a button, a link in the text, a link behind an image, and a clickable banner at the bottom. If links are directed to the brand’s website (usually top domain of the sub domain used as sending domain for the email) and the hyperlink is secured, your CTAs should not be flagged as spam. 

Are unsubscribe rates in your report based on unsubscribes per successful deliveries or total opens? 

The former – unsubscribes in the 2025 Marketing benchmark report represent the percentage of delivered email messages that generate unsubscribe requests. To calculate, divide the number of unsubscribe requests received by the number of delivered emails and multiply by 100. 

How do we know if a person has actually opened it and not a bot? 

For customers using Acoustic Connect, we created an algorithm that detects bot clicks for emails. Bot clicks are algorithmically detected based on the frequency and time of numerous clicks and flagged as non-user behavior. Bot clicks are pre-filtered in “Insights.” However, users can remove the filter when accessing the reports to view bot-click impacts.  

Many email platforms now have primary or promotional categories. How do we make sure our emails are falling into a primary category? 

There are a couple of ways you can try to manage this. First, you can ask recipients to move you by including a brief note such as, “Drag this to your Primary tab to never miss an update.” Gmail, for instance, learns from this and adjusts future delivery. You can also ask subscribers to add you to their contacts list. Emails from known contacts are more likely to hit the primary inbox. At the end of the day, you can’t fully control categorization – algorithms and user habits have the final say. A promotional email might still land in “Promotions” even with perfect setup if its intent is overtly sales-driven.  

In many cases, falling in the promotions tab isn’t inherently a bad thing – when subscribers go to the promotions tab, they’re usually in a shopping mindset. They’re ready to browse your offers and read about your newest products, which is a great starting point for marketing emails. The promotions tab is an opportunity (and challenge) for marketers to create memorable emails that elevate their brand in the inbox so much that their subscribers are not just expecting their emails, but actively seeking them out by going to that tab.  

How do you address deliverability issue for .edu email addresses? 

Beyond the normal advice we share for deliverability – including authentication, sender reputation, list hygiene, sending practices, and analysis – another way to improve deliverability with education institutions is to build relationships with IT departments. If you are frequently sending emails to a specific university, consider reaching out to their IT or postmaster to whitelist your domain. Remember that if you have a large number of contacts with a .edu address, this means that a significant number of individuals within that institution have requested email from you. If your data acquisition practices and content are solid, and align with the universities policies, IT teams should approve your request.  

Some universities have existing mailing list registration processes and policies that you can also check out. If this path is not successful, and .edu recipients aren’t your main target audience, it may be time to cull the contacts from your list. Sending over and over to addresses that bounce or block you can lead to wider deliverability issues – be that through a direct complaint by the university (e.g. to a blocklist) or poor sender reputation generated by repeated sends. Lastly, remember that many .edu addresses will be closed or unused after a student has completed their studies, making it even more important that you are targeting only active contacts. 

We are seeing clients creating email aliases to use in “from” and “reply to email” but then these get blocked - thoughts? 

We would advise against any email aliases for a few reasons:  

• These aliases could go against Gmail sender requirements and guidelines with regards to impersonation 
• The “from name” must use a sending domain which is fully authenticated and configured by your ESP 
• While your “reply-to” address can be any email address, we do recommend an email address which refers to the same domain as the brand/sending domain used in the “from address” 

I'm considering implementing BIMI in our emails, but wanted to have data supporting that it will improve results. Can you provide any metrics? 

We know that email providers, including Yahoo Mail, have seen a 10% increase in engagement when inboxes include verified brand logos next to email messages giving marketers a powerful incentive to authenticate with BIMI. Check out our blog on BIMI for more information about the benefits. 

Are there any unintended AI consequences on email delivery? 

AI has had some effects, both positive and negative. On the positive side, some versions of AI have been powering spam filtering at major mailbox providers for years. It’s likely that AI will help spam filters improve when it comes to identifying phishing attempts, malicious emails, and low-quality marketing messages. On the negative side, it becomes risky when mailbox providers over rely on untested or questionable AI models for spam filtering while neglecting existing, proven reputation, filtering, and authentication signals. Unfortunately, spammers and other bad actors are also leveraging AI to their advantage to: 

• Generate highly personalized phishing emails that mimic legitimate senders 
• Create adaptive, real-time attacks that modify content to evade detection 
• Craft human-like chatbot interactions for phishing and fraud attempts 

How do sliced image-based emails perform compared to those with live text? 

In our experience, a sliced image-based email – with a large image sliced up into a grid of separate images that are meant to appear as one seamless image layout – is an email design approach that does not work well today. Sliced image grids don't scale well for mobile. In place of that, we see people creating image-heavy emails, which as it sounds, is one made up of largely image-based content.  

With an image-heavy email, what matters most is appropriateness and balance. If the approach is well thought out, heavy imagery should not interfere with recipient usability. Here are some guidelines to keep in mind: 

• Make sure an image-heavy approach is appropriate for the audience and not a turn-off.
• If images will be a dominant part of the messaging, your team should have the resources available to support this.  
• Don't forget about accessibility and use alt text so screen reader users can still get some of the intended messaging conveyed in the images. This is also helpful for situations where images are generally not available due to network latency issues.
• Be reasonable about overall download size, aim for a maximum of 4-5 MB overall.
• Blocked or unavailable images should not render your message useless if you include key messaging as live text to back up and support the imagery. This will also ensure your messages are searchable, while allowing you to make use of engaging features like data-driven personalization, and cutting and pasting of any important text like offer codes, addresses, phone numbers, etc.  

The most important factor if you're considering going the image-heavy route is to make sure it’s a measured, intentional, and justified decision. Testing with your specific audience will give you the unique data you'll need to decide how best to proceed. 

What is the ideal email database size for a company? What are the reliable sources for email database growth?  

We recommend checking out our guide to email lists, From opt-in to engagement: Creating a quality email list, where you can find a list of tips, strategies, and best practices. 

What are some best practices for maintaining data hygiene, and tools to support it? 

To maintain data hygiene, we recommend automatically removing hard bounces and unengaged subscribers, considering implementing a double opt-in method, and setting reporting alerts for sudden abuse/bounce rate spikes. Make it a regular, quarterly practice to clean your list. Some useful tools we recommended include ZeroBounce, NeverBounce, and BriteVerify.  

Is the North America average data that you shared specific to certain industries? 

The industries included within our analysis are the following, and any geographical breakdowns encompass all these industries in the report: Business Services, Consumer Services, Education, Energy, Utilities and Waste, Finance, Hospitality, Hospitals and Clinics, Insurance, Manufacturing, Media & Internet, Organizations, Real Estate, Retail, Software, Telecommunications, and Transportation.  

In the non-profit industry, what approach would you recommend for increasing open rates or building engagement over time with an audience? 

All general best practices can apply to non-profit organizations. However, the focus should be on the relationship you build with donors and the tone of voice. Some tips include:  

• Use personalization, invite readers to ask questions, and remember their last donation or conversation 
• Leverage user generated content from people who donated or people who received the funds and support 
• Send interactive emails including videos and testimonials 
• Make sure you have strong CTAs 
• Reach out and be clear on days when donation are being matched 
• Set up “Thank you for your donation journeys” starting with an initial thank you email and followed up by what the donation has been used for and why regular donations are important 

Travel is still being prioritized even in today’s economy. Can you share any insight on how travel email rates have changed?

We don’t have an industry in our report classified as “Travel,” although we can look at Hospitality, which would lodging and resorts, as well as “Transportation,” which includes airlines:  

• We see slight increases for open rates across both Hospitality and Transportation compared to last year—overall the numbers appear very stable 
• Looking at the CTR, there are some slight dips as well as some slight bumps compared to last year depending on the email send type across both industries, but again the data is quite stable 

Check out our 2024 Marketing Benchmark Report if you want to draw more comparisons to the 2025 report.  

What is considered personalization in an email? Is the person's name enough? Do you have any ideas or examples of email personalization? 

Here are some examples, for more check out our guide to segmentation and personalization:

• Use dynamic content: Populate text, images, and CTAs based on web browsing history, purchases, data attributes, or preferences 
• Setup up simple lifecycle emails for events like anniversaries, birthdays, or purchases 
• Use the recipient’s first name in the subject line or body of the email and consider using other data attributes when the use case supports it 
• To tackle browse and cart abandon, populate product images, copy, price, etc. within the body of the email