In 2025, Omeda delivered over 7.6 billion emails on behalf of clients. In Q4 2025, clients sent 1.93B emails with strong delivery (99.18%) and stable open rates (48.09%). Click performance compressed materially, both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year.
The headline:
Opens held. Clicks fell. Clicks-per-open (total clicks/total opens) dropped to 3.47%, down from 4.47% in Q3 and 4.72% in Q4 2024.
This pattern signals a shift in how audiences engage—not whether they engage at all.
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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.
QoQ Comparison: Q4 2025 vs. Q3 2025 (All Sends)
- Delivered volume: 1.93B vs 1.96B (-1.3%)
- Deployments: +7.7% → smaller average send size (≈21.3k delivered/deployment vs 23.2k)
| Metric | Q4 2025 | Q3 2025 | Δ (Abs) | Δ (Rel) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delivery Rate | 99.18% | 98.98% | +0.22pp | +0.20% |
| Unique Open Rate | 32.91% | 33.80% | -0.89pp | -2.64% |
| Unique Click Rate | 1.09% | 1.42% | -0.34pp | -23.6% |
| Unique Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR) | 3.30% | 4.21% | -0.91pp | -21.6% |
| Unsubscribe Rate | 0.13% | 0.146% | -0.02pp | -13.7% |
| Complaint Rate | 0.0031% | 0.0033% | -0.0003 | -8.6% |
Trends & Analysis
Click compression defines Q4
Opens remained healthy, but click yield fell sharply:
- Total Clicks/Delivered: down QoQ (2.20% → 1.67%) and YoY (2.25% → 1.67%)
- Total Clicks/Total Opens: down QoQ (4.47% → 3.47%) and YoY (4.72% → 3.47%)
This divergence matters. Open rates can remain stable even as attention-to-action weakens.
Why clicks fall while opens hold:
- Q4 content skews toward recap and in-email consumption
- Fewer event-driven or utility-triggered actions
- Improved bot filtering reduces inflated click counts
- Inbox UX and AI summaries lower the need to click out
External benchmarks reinforce this pattern. Beehiiv’s State of Newsletters 2026 reports CTR declining from 4.74% (2024) to 3.23% (2025)—a ~32% relative drop—attributed to inbox competition and higher CTA thresholds.
Bottom line: Engagement is changing, not disappearing.
More deployments, smaller audiences
Q4 saw +14.7% YoY deployments with slightly lower delivered volume. This strongly suggests increased segmentation—more editions, tighter targeting, and list slicing—common across media programs.
List health remains strong; unsubscribe pressure is the watchout
- Complaint rates improved YoY, reinforcing healthy sender reputation at scale.
- Unsubscribes remain elevated vs 2024, though improved vs Q3.
This pattern aligns with higher cadence and narrower targeting: more relevance, but less tolerance for excess sends.
Bot-adjusted click reality check
Automated link scanning now represents the majority of observed click activity:
- ~85% of clicks overall
- ~79% for newsletters
As bot suppression improves, reported CTR can decline even when real user behavior is unchanged. That said, Q4 also shows a genuine human click contraction into December, consistent with seasonality and content mix.
The Q4 change in clicks does not reflect a loss of audience attention, but rather a shift in how engagement is earned and measured. Audience attention remained stable, as indicated by consistent open rates, highlighting the value of content delivered and consumed directly in the inbox. However, Q4 inboxes are more competitive, and the threshold for action—reflected in clicks—compresses even as overall engagement remains steady.
Additionally, as bot filtering and automated click suppression continue to improve across the industry, the reported baseline for human action naturally softens. For that reason, opens and CTR should be treated as directional indicators rather than end goals.
Q4 Designation Deep Dive
Newsletters (primary driver)
- ~50% of delivered volume (≈969M)
- 51.37% OR | 2.64% CTR
- Low unsub (~0.11%)
Even under click pressure, newsletters remain the highest-leverage channel due to scale + engagement.
Marketing Sends
- ~17.5% of delivered volume (≈339M)
- ~46.8% OR | ~0.57% CTR
As marketing volume scales—especially in Q4—it can pull down blended CTR.
Other Observations
- Digital Magazines: higher CTR (~1.71%) but higher unsub (~0.23%)
- Virtual events / surveys: higher unsub rates (~0.2–0.3%), reflecting high-intent, high-churn dynamics
Seasonality Insights
Q4 consistently challenges click outcomes more than opens, particularly in December:
- OR: ~48.7% (Oct) → 46.4% (Dec)
- CTR: 1.76% (Oct) → 1.55% (Dec)
In 2025, opens stayed relatively stable across quarters, but click yield declined steadily—sharpest in Q4.
We noticed that there was a very different mix of email types sent in Q4 than in Q3. This change in email send volume by designation likely contributed to the soft click rate.
Practical takeaway:
Q4 success should emphasize reach, retention, and high-intent moments, not raw CTR. The most effective Q4 programs focus less on maximizing raw engagement volume and more on protecting list health, reinforcing high-intent moments, and optimizing conversion points downstream of the inbox.
View All the Email Engagement Data
Interested in diving deeper into all the data? Here’s more information about Q4 2025 email engagement by the numbers in charts you can play with for the view that’s most helpful to your team.
Compare different email types side-by-side with an interactive email metrics comparison:
Here’s an overview of key metrics by email type for all of 2025.
Sources:
Omeda aggregated client email data on file.
