Last quarter, we saw a marked increase in email performance, particularly in the newsletter and promotion categories. Engagement fell off slightly in Q2, with click rates falling by about 7%. 

This was driven largely by declines in the newsletter category (click rates decreased by 8.91% and CTR decreased by nearly 6%). Since newsletters made up 52.5% of all deployments sent through Omeda this quarter, their performance had an outsize impact on overall engagement metrics. 

This was mitigated by improvements in the promotions category, as click rates and CTR rose by 9.72% and 11.50%, respectively. (That’s especially impressive considering that our clients sent nearly 17% more promotional emails in Q2 than Q1.) But because promotions only make up 31.3% of Omeda emails, this alone wasn’t enough to offset the newsletter category’s dropoff.

Another factor to consider: We had a big increase in sending volume this quarter. Our clients sent nearly 200 million more emails in Q2 (a 10% increase), which we can attribute to new clients onboarding to Omeda, current clients using our ESP for the first time, and sending increases from our long-standing ESP clients. As our clients introduce and experiment with their strategy, their performance might fall below the average at first. This could contribute to the overall decline in clicks as well.

But that’s not the whole story. Next, let’s look at performance trends by deployment type to see what’s driving email engagement — and how you can perfect your strategy going forward. 

(Includes digital magazines and newsletters)

• # of deployments: +5.13% 
• Unique Open Rate: 32.43% (-3.22%)  
• Unique Click Rate: 1.84% (-8.91%)  
• Unique CTR: 5.66% (-5.82%) 

Newsletters saw an 8.60% increase in click rates and a 5.43% increase in CTR in Q1 2023. This quarter, newsletter performance fell to almost the same degree, as clicks and CTR fell by 8.91% and 5.82%, respectively. 

If you’ve been reading this report for a while, this might feel like deja vu to you. You’d be right: We’re starting to see a strong cyclical trend in newsletter performance, especially as it relates to click rates. As you can see below, the absolute click rates for newsletters tend to increase by about 0.2% in Q1 and Q3, only to fall by about the same amount in Q2 and Q4.

Keep your readers engaged all year with these tips:  

• Use dynamic content in your emails: Dynamic content serves different images and content to email recipients based on their specific interactions with your brand, allowing you to personalize at the individual level. So even if two people are in the same demographic and behavioral segments, they’re getting something that’s geared to their needs — and more likely to get their attention.  
• Stick to a schedule: We’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: Our most successful clients send their newsletters at the same time and day every week.  
• Run re-engagement campaigns: Keep your lists clean — and protect your deliverability — by running re-engagement campaigns every quarter. 
• Optimize for readability. Your newsletter layout impacts its readbility and overall engagement. So if performance has been falling off, this is a good place to start. If you’ve been using an standard block design, try switching to an inverted pyramid or alternating block layout. 

(Includes reader service, research and surveys)

• # of deployments: -8.22%
• Unique open rate: 28.53% (-13.20%) 
• Unique click rate: 0.59% (+7.27%) 
• Unique CTR: 2.08% (+25.30%) 

Our clients sent 8.22% fewer surveys in Q2 than Q1. While open rates fell by 13,2%, click rates actually rose by 7.27%. Since these emails got more clicks and less opens, we’d expect to see a big increase in CTR (clicks divided by opens). And we did, as the CTR for survey emails rose by more than 25%. 

(Includes events, live conferences, virtual conferences and webinars)

• # of deployments: +20.40% 
• Unique open rate: 26.59% ( -3.45%) 
• Unique click rate: 0.55% (-8.33%) 
• Unique CTR: 2.06% ( -4.63%) 

This quarter, we saw a global decline in engagement for event emails. This was driven by a few different factors, which we’ll get into below: 

Our clients sent about 20% more event-related emails (224 million in Q2 vs. 186 million in Q1). We’d expect to see big increases in the event and live conference subcategories in particular, as this aligns with the spring professional conference season. 

And we did: Sends in those subcategories increased by 13.32 % and 10%, respectively. However, we also saw less engagement, as their click rates dropped by 7.46% and 20.27%, respectively. Full stats are below:

Quick methodology note: Clients self-assign their emails to one of these subcategories, so it is possible that there is significant overlap between categories that sound similar, and that is the case with our events and live conference subcategories. Because both cover emails that promote live gatherings, we are analyzing these subcategories together.

Events subcategory 

• # of deployments: +13.32%
• Unique open rate: 27.57% (NC) 
• Unique click rate: 0.62% (-7.46%)
• Unique CTR: 2.27% (-5.81%)  

Live conferences

• # of deployments: +10.00% 
• Unique open rate: 24.64% (-11.84%)  
• Unique click rate: 0.29% (-20.91%)  
• Unique CTR: 1.20% (-9.77%) 

So what’s going on here? The first half of 2023 was marked by economic instability, which could have changed the way people interact with emails for live events in a few different ways. 

The impact of mass layoffs: People who were laid off lost access to their professional email, so they couldn’t open or click any event invitations sent to that address.

Say that Mike from HomeGoods just got laid off and lost his HomeGoods email address — so now he can’t see your event invitation emails. That alone would impact your engagement rates. But the standard live event will send dozens of promotional and logistical emails. So unless the host is removing recipients that never opened or clicked, this effect will compound over the course of the event lifecycle. By the big day, Mike’s received 10-20 emails about it — and hasn’t engaged with any of them. Multiply that over thousands of people and you can see why email engagement in this subcategory, in particular, could have declined so much in one quarter.

Decreased event travel budgets: Among those who stayed at their jobs, we’d also expect to see lower engagement as travel budgets and event allowances get cut. A team that might have sent 7 employees to an annual conference in 2022 might only send 3 in 2023. The 4 employees staying home this time might still get all the event emails — and ignore them since they know they can’t attend.  

Hosting a live event soon? Maximize clicks and registrations with these best practices: 

• Clean your list before sending your first invitation email to ensure your emails are only being sent to actively engaged recipients. Besides boosting your metrics, this also protects your deliverability as you start sending more and more invitation emails.
• Segment your audience by interest and adjust your messaging for each group.
• If you’re running your event email campaign through Odyssey, use the fatigue filter to temporarily stop sending to recipients who are “fatigued” by too many email sends. (You can set your own criteria for “fatigued” in Odyssey, but generally, someone’s considered “fatigued” if they receive a certain number of emails within a certain time period and don’t engage with any of them.)
• Experiment with your wait times between each email to see what sending cadence yields the most engagement.
• Reduce your reliance on standalone emails by promoting your event via website personalizations, sponsored ads and retargeting. (On Odyssey, you can create one automated campaign that covers all of these channels!).
  

Also consider promoting your event in your newsletter — or embedding registration widgets into your most popular blog posts and landing pages.

Then as you start signing on speakers, encourage them to promote their participation in your event via their own social media platforms and newsletters. Give them their own affiliate links so you can attribute registrations to individual promotions and see which speakers drive the most traffic. 

• # of deployments: +29.12%
• Unique open rate: 28.64% (NC)  
• Unique click rate: 0.72% (+10.77%)  
• Unique CTR: 2.51% (+10.08%) 

Our clients also sent significantly more webinar emails in Q2 than Q1. But unlike the event and live conference subcategories, webinar emails actually saw a 10.77% increase in clicks this quarter.

So what’s the difference? Why are we seeing more opens and clicks for webinar emails when engagement for their live counterparts is dropping? Here’s what we think: 

Webinars are more likely to have a self-selecting audience. While there are definitely niche live conferences out there, you’ve also got many companies hosting annual industry conferences and promoting them to a list of 5,000+. Any event with a general appeal and a large attendee list is likely to have a lower open, click, and CTR percentage than one with a narrower focus. 

Since they’re limited to one topic, webinars also attract a much more niched audience. So if you’ve been segmenting your audience based on interest, you can send your invites to a more focused list of people that are very likely to open, click and attend. 

Webinars are easier to attend. Another key difference between webinars and live events is their accessibility. Anyone with an internet connection can attend a webinar — and that has big implications for email engagement. 

Because webinars require less effort to attend, their emails are more likely to get opens and clicks from fringe attendees — people who might watch if their schedule is clear that day or if the speaker looks cool. Some people even register for a webinar knowing they can’t attend live — and wait for the recap email to watch the recording. In either case, someone who’s only somewhat interested might still open and click the invitation email. 

Since they’re more time-consuming and expensive, live conferences are less likely to draw that kind of passive interest (and those incremental clicks and opens). That alone can prevent many people from opening and clicking their emails: Someone in Dubai might automatically ignore a subject line that reads “Join us in Phoenix for our Annual Conference” regardless of who’s hosting the event or what it’s about. 

Webinars require less promotion than live events. Finally, webinars tend to have a less aggressive email cadence than their live counterparts, so recipients are less likely to get email fatigue.

For a standard webinar, you might receive 1-2 invitations, a reminder email and, if you registered, a recap. That’s a lot less aggressive than a live conference, where you might get 4 promotional emails alone, followed by additional logistical details about the agenda, event space, hotels/travel, amenities, etc.

So if someone has no interest in attending a webinar, or they lost their professional email address due to a layoff, they’ll only “miss” 4 emails rather than 10-15. As a result, their continued disinterest won’t have as big an impact on your email stats overall. 

(Includes any communications that don’t fit into the other deployment categories)

• # of deployments: +32.72% 
• Unique open rate: 31.92% (-2.98%) 
• Unique click rate: 1.00% (+6.38%)
• Unique CTR: 3.12% (+9.09%)

(Includes advertiser promotion, audience promotion, marketing, third party and white papers)

• # of deployments: +16.57%
• Unique open rate: 31.49% (-0.94%)  
• Unique click rate: 0.79% (+9.72%) 
• Unique CTR: 2.52% (+11.50%) 

Even though our clients sent about 80 million more promotional emails in Q2, clicks and CTR actually rose by 9.72% and 11.50%, respectively. We saw this increase across every promotional subcategory, which we broke down below:

• # of deployments: +19.83%
• Unique open rate: 31.36% (-0.57%)
• Unique click rate: 0.70% (+9.38%)
• Unique CTR: 2.24% (+6.67%)

• # of deployments: +37.52%
• Unique open rate: 33.60% (+3.58%)
• Unique click rate: 0.57% (+3.63%)
• Unique CTR: 1.71% (+3.01%)

• # of deployments: +13.46%
• Unique open rate: 32.10% (-1.41%) 
• Unique click rate: 0.87% (+11.54%) 
• Unique CTR: 2.72% (+13.81%)

Apple announced new privacy changes that will be rolled out in iOS17, which is slated for full release in September 2023. With iOS17, Apple will begin automatically removing link trackers from URLs sent through Messages and Mail, as well as from Safari Private Browsing. 

This new feature, also called Link Tracking Protection (LTP), could make it more difficult to use UTM codes in your emails and, more broadly, complicate reporting for your email campaigns. If you’re just catching your breath from MPP, you might not be ready for yet another source of noise in your reports. So we’re addressing your biggest questions about LTP. How does it work and when is it being released? What is being removed from reports? What does that mean for the emails you’re sending through Omeda?  Are there any unintended consequences to look out for? We answer all that and more below.

But first, a caveat: We’re basing our analysis on our testing of iOS17’s public beta, which is subject to change to significant updates before its full release in September 2023. 

iOS17’s public beta was released in early July 2023 and the full version is scheduled to be released in September.

Early reports claimed that all link tracking parameters (UTM codes, etc.) would be stripped from all links sent through Apple Mail, Messages, and Safari Private Browsing. 

We’re seeing some evidence to the contrary, though: Several sources that have already tested the beta version of iOS17 claimed that only tracking parameters that contain unique personal identifiers and click IDs (Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Meta Ads, Facebook’s Conversion API) were impacted, while standard UTMs (campaign, source, medium), were not. Our internal tests have shown similar results. While this is subject to change before LTP’s formal release, it suggests that LTP’s impact might be less severe than we thought. 

However, LTP could impact conversion tracking and known/unknown conversions via the oly_enc_id parameter in some circumstance, depending on the recipient’s email client and Internet browser, as well as whether you use link tracking. Use this chart to see which parameters could be included or removed in your reports:

Will I still be able to track email clicks through Omeda? 

Yes! You’ll still be able to track clicks from emails sent through Omeda, and see who clicked which email, regardless of what device they’re from. 

Will I still be able to track different UTM codes through Omeda? 

Based on our testing, UTM parameters do NOT appear to be stripped from emails. LTP will remove some ID-type parameters from links, this doesn’t include UTM parameters. This is true regardless of whether you’re using Omeda’s Link Tracking redirects. 

Based on testing of iOS17’s public beta, the oly_enc_id parameter will be removed in Apple Mail only if Omeda’s Link Tracking feature is not on. We.do not anticipate that this will be an issue for most clients.   

If Omeda’s Link Tracking is OFF, Olytics conversions would not be tracked. (So if Alyson opens your email in Apple Mail, then clicks a link that leads to your website, you’d be able to see that Alyson clicked the link, but would not be able to track the visit or future visits to pages across your site and associate those visits to Alyson.)