Email Engagement Report - Q3 2025 - Content

Email performance in Q3 2025 revealed a mixed landscape: while open rates rebounded, click performance declined and unsubscribe rates surged. Bot/non-human activity remained a substantial factor, especially when advanced suppression was disabled. These trends underline the importance of signal quality, content optimization, and active audience management as platform policies evolve.

So far in 2025, Omeda has delivered over 5.9 billion emails on behalf of clients from our platform. Here are the latest email benchmarks gathered from 1.98 billion emails sent in Q3 2025:

Metric	Q3 2025	Q2 2025	Δ (Abs)	Δ (Rel)
Delivery Rate	98.98%	99.15%	-0.17%	-0.17%
Unique Open Rate	33.80%	32.56%	+1.24%	+3.81%
Unique Click Rate	1.42%	1.57%	-0.15%	-9.55%
Unique Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR)	4.21%	4.81%	-0.60%	-12.47%
Unsubscribe Rate	0.146%	0.093%	+0.053%	+56.99%
Complaint Rate	0.0033%	0.0031%	+0.0002%	+6.45%

Want to easily calculate your benchmark against our latest data?
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Email type breakdown

Events
Includes events, live conferences, virtual conferences and webinars.

Surveys & Research
Includes reader service, research and surveys.

Newsletters
Includes newsletters.

Digital Magazines
Includes only digital magazines. Note that in past reports this metric was grouped with Newsletters. We are now separating that data in these reports.

Promo/Marketing
Includes advertiser promotion, audience promotion, marketing, third-party and white papers.

Trends & Analysis

Slight Dip in Deliverability: The delivery rate slipped by 0.17 percentage points to 98.98%, a mild decline but one to watch given increasing list churn indicators.
Open Rates Holding Up: A 1.2-point gain in unique open rate continues the upward trend.
Click Rates Fall: Unique clicks dropped -9.6% quarter-over-quarter, and CTOR declined -12.5%, signaling a potential weakening in content relevance, CTA visibility, or reader interest.
Unsubscribes Surge: At 0.146%, unsubscribe rate is up nearly +57% from Q2—is a concern. We dig more into this trend in the report.
Complaint Rate Stable but Rising: Though still very low, complaint rate ticked up to 0.0033%, which, alongside unsubscribe volume, signals changes in how platforms may be handling email.

Bot/Non-human traffic suppression continues to play a major role in clarifying engagement performance:

Human Click Rate Impact: When suppression is ON, reported human-attributed click rates are significantly lower—across all designation types. For example:
- Digital Magazine: 8.36% (Suppression ON) vs. 16.67% (Suppression OFF)
- Advertiser Promotion: 6.37% vs. 15.93%
Bot/Non-human Click Share remains high even with suppression enabled in some weeks (83%+), showing suppression helps—but does not eliminate—automation inflation.
Events & Live Conferences drove the cleanest human engagement under suppression, showing where high-quality signals concentrate.

Implications:

Without suppression, click metrics are likely overstated, particularly in promotional sends.
Performance-based decisions should rely on human-filtered metrics for targeting, content testing, and monetization.

Unsubscribe Rate: Elevated and Widespread, with Yahoo/AOL Implications

The average unsubscribe rate rose to 0.146% in Q3, a +57% increase from Q2. This sharp rise is broad-based across clients and signals a need for closer scrutiny. Early analysis points to a notable contributor: Yahoo/AOL domains. Yahoo Mail reduced its free storage to 20GB on August 27, which may be influencing list fatigue signals and triggering unsubscribes at higher rates.

While the correlation with Yahoo/AOL activity is clear, broader contributing factors likely include over-mailing, insufficient content value, or weak audience targeting—all areas that can accelerate disengagement. We encourage Omeda clients to consult their Client Success Managers to review domain-level engagement trends and determine if further list segmentation or cadence adjustments are warranted.

Google announced the “Manage Subscription” UI within Gmail in July 2025. An additional investigation into potential ties with the effect of this change is ongoing.

Gmail’s New Reality

While we suspect some of the rising unsubscribes may reflect list fatigue or cadence misalignment, it’s happening in the shadow of a major change: Gmail’s updated unsubscribe experience.

Google’s enhancements—rolled out globally this summer—bring:

A more prominent “Unsubscribe” button directly in the inbox view
Stricter enforcement of list-unsubscribe headers
Greater pressure on bulk senders to maintain clean, permissioned lists

The result? A more accessible, frictionless opt-out process—and less tolerance for irrelevant or overly frequent messaging. The implications are significant for publishers and media brands who rely on regular touchpoints to drive engagement, monetization, and first-party data capture.

📘 Learn More: Gmail’s New Subscription and Promotions Features: Impact on Publishers

This post unpacks:

What Gmail changed (and why)
How it affects promotional and editorial sends
Key list hygiene and audience retention strategies

As we head into Q4, brands must pivot from list size thinking to list health strategy driven by verified engagement, suppressed inactives, and realigned expectations around cadence.

Finishing 2025 Strong

As inboxes heat up and attention fragments, here’s how to stay visible—and valuable:

Stop Chasing Clicks Without Context
Click data is only useful when they’re real/human. Make sure advanced click bot suppression is on, and human-click validation is part of your internal workflow.
Scrub with Purpose
Unsubscribes and complaints are rising—lean into list hygiene and suppress disengaged segments ahead of high-volume sends.
Reassess Frequency + Format
Fatigue is real. Pull back where you’ve over-mailed and reinvest in formats that bring value (editorial, event-driven, data-led).
Trust Engagement Tiers, Not Opens
Clicks (filtered) + conversions matter more than opens, especially as Apple’s MPP and Gmail filters persist. Retool your scoring models accordingly.
Prep for Q4 Monetization with Clean Data
Prioritize sponsors and promotions on your highest human-clicking designation types. Events, newsletters, and magazines continue to show the strongest clean engagement overall.

Resource Highlight: Smaller Lists, Bigger Wins

Facing higher unsubscribe rates and uneven engagement? Now is the time to revisit your list strategy. One of our most downloaded resources this year, Smaller Lists, Bigger Wins: How Smart Email Engagement Strategies Drive Real Results, shows how trimming your list can boost deliverability, sharpen audience insights, and even increase advertiser value.

Two publishers—Gardner and Access Intelligence—followed the playbook: they cut underperforming segments, improved targeting, and saw tangible lifts in engagement and monetization. The guide covers: