Do welcome, birthday, and win-back email messages sent by brands make it into consumers' inboxes—and when they do, do they get read?

To find out, Return Path examined data from more than 600,000 unique commercial email messages sent by more than 3,000 brands to consumers between July 22 and November 29, 2017.

As part of the analysis, the researchers looked at each message type and determined the average inbox placement rate (share of emails that landed in the inbox), read rate (share of emails marked as read), "this is not spam" rate (share of emails marked as "not spam” or “not junk”), spam placement rate (share of emails delivered to the spam folder), deleted before reading rate (share of emails trashed before read), and complaint rate (share of messages reported as spam/junk).

Below, key findings from the report.

Welcome Messages

Some 84% of welcome messages make it into inboxes and 23% are read, on average.

Birthday Messages

Some 93% of birthday messages make it into inboxes and 23% are read, on average.

Win-Back Messages

Some 88% of win-back messages make it into inboxes and 20% are read, on average.

About a research: The report was based on data from more than 600,000 unique commercial email messages sent by more than 3,000 brands to consumers between July 22 and November 29, 2017.