Email vs social media marketing statistics 2026.

Email vs social media marketing statistics at a glance

Is the $36 email marketing ROI figure real?

The $36 to $42 per dollar email ROI figure comes from surveys asking marketers to estimate their own return, not from measured revenue against measured cost. Two organisations publish it. The DMA's own article on 7 July 2026 puts the Marketer Email Tracker 2026 figure at almost £41 returned per £1 spent, up from just over £38, and the report page states the sample: 250 marketers, published 25 March 2026. Litmus asks a similar question in its State of Email survey of nearly 500 marketing professionals: 35% of leaders estimated a return of $10 to $36 per dollar in 2025, 30% estimated $36 to $50, and 5% estimated more than $50.

How do email and social media engagement rates compare?

Email and social engagement rates cannot be compared until you fix the denominator, because email rates are measured against emails delivered while social rates are measured against followers on some platforms and impressions on others. Omnisend's 2025 campaign click rate of 0.74% counts clicks against every email delivered, and Socialinsider's Instagram rate of 0.48% counts likes and comments against every follower. Socialinsider's LinkedIn rate of 5.20% counts interactions against impressions, a far smaller denominator, so it sits in a different unit entirely.

Other vendors publish much higher email rates, and the reason is population rather than performance. Mailchimp's all-industry figures, last updated with December 2023 data, give a 2.62% click rate. GetResponse's report on 4.4 billion messages sent in 2023 gives 3.25%. Both are dated by more than two years, and both cover a broad mix of senders, while Omnisend's sample leans ecommerce with large promotional lists. Use the benchmark whose sender population looks like yours, and name it.

Why are email open rates no longer a usable metric?

Email open rates stopped being a reliable measurement in September 2021, when Apple's Mail Privacy Protection began pre-loading tracking pixels whether or not the recipient opened the message. Litmus measured Apple Mail at 62.26% of tracked opens in July 2026, across more than one billion opens, and puts Mail Privacy Protection's reach at 55% to 60% of opens overall.

How many social followers equal one email subscriber?

One thousand email subscribers produce as many interactions per message as 1,540 Instagram followers, 4,930 Facebook followers or 6,170 followers on X, and only about 200 followers on TikTok. That equation counts one email click as one social engagement, and the two are not the same act: a click lands on a page you own, an engagement is usually a like. Read the table as reach economics per message, not as a like-for-like swap. The arithmetic uses one audience-size denominator and one message for both channels: Omnisend's 0.74% campaign click rate gives 7.4 clicks per 1,000 recipients, and Socialinsider's per-follower engagement rates give the interactions each platform returns per 1,000 followers per post.

Two caveats decide this table's weight. Brands post far more often than they email: Socialinsider's median is 70 posts a month on X, 24 on Facebook, 20 on Instagram and 15 on TikTok, and volume closes part of the per-message gap wherever volume is free. The TikTok row is also the least stable number on this page, because Socialinsider's mid-2026 update puts TikTok at 2.60% per follower, down 10%, which moves the TikTok equivalent from about 200 followers to about 285.

How fast is organic social engagement falling?

Organic social engagement is falling on most platforms, with a median change of -18% across eight platform-year readings from two independent benchmark vendors, and seven of those eight readings are negative or flat. Rival IQ's 2025 report, built on 4 million posts and 9 billion interactions from 150 companies per industry, recorded year-over-year engagement declines of 36% on Facebook, 48% on X, 34% on TikTok and 16% on Instagram. Socialinsider's more recent read on 2025 data found Instagram down 4%, Facebook flat, X down 20% and TikTok up 49%.

Which audience is bigger, and who owns it?

Social platforms reach far more people than any email list, and none of that audience belongs to the brand. DataReportal's Digital 2026 report counts 5.66 billion social media user identities, 68.7% of the global population, up 259 million in twelve months. Pew Research Center's survey of 5,022 US adults between February and June 2025 found half of US adults use Instagram, with YouTube and Facebook the most widely used platforms.

Which channel do marketers choose in practice?

B2B marketers use email as their main personalisation channel and LinkedIn as their main thought leadership channel, according to Content Marketing Institute's survey of 1,015 B2B marketers fielded between 24 June and 14 August 2025. Email campaigns are personalised by 85% of respondents against 34% for social media content, while 76% rate LinkedIn most effective for thought leadership and 54% say the same of email newsletters.

How we calculated the original numbers

Four figures on this page do not appear anywhere else. Here is the arithmetic so you can check it or swap the inputs.

1. 7.4 clicks per 1,000 email recipients per campaign. Omnisend's 2025 benchmark click-through rate is 0.74% of emails delivered, across more than 20 billion campaign emails from 27,000 brands. 0.74% of 1,000 is 7.4.
2. Follower equivalents of a 1,000-person list. Socialinsider's 2026 per-follower engagement rates are 0.48% on Instagram, 0.15% on Facebook, 0.12% on X and 3.73% on TikTok. Dividing 7.4 interactions by each rate gives 1,542 Instagram followers, 4,933 on Facebook, 6,167 on X and 198 on TikTok. Both sides use audience size as the denominator and one message as the unit, but the sum equates an email click with a social engagement, which are different acts measured on different actions. It is an illustration of reach economics per message, not a like-for-like equivalence.
3. A median engagement change of -18%. The eight platform-year readings are Rival IQ's -36% (Facebook), -16% (Instagram), -34% (TikTok) and -48% (X) into 2024, plus Socialinsider's -4% (Instagram), 0% (Facebook), -20% (X) and +49% (TikTok) through 2025. Sorted, the middle pair is -20% and -16%, giving a median of -18%. Seven of the eight are negative or flat.
4. 750 marketers behind the headline email ROI. The DMA's 2026 tracker surveyed 250 marketers and Litmus surveyed nearly 500 marketing professionals, so the £41 and $36 figures rest on roughly 750 self-reported estimates. Litmus reports that 21% of its respondents measure no email ROI at all, which removes about 105 of those 500 from the pool of answers grounded in any measurement.

What the 2026 numbers say about email and social

The email ROI number is an opinion poll and should be labelled as one. Two surveys, 750 marketers, zero published measured revenue against measured cost. The measured figure that does exist, $0.155 of revenue per campaign email sent, is smaller, duller and defensible. If I had to pick one correction for this whole page to be remembered for, it is that one.

Per person in the audience, email does more work per message than every platform except TikTok. A 1,000-person list matches a 4,930-follower Facebook page on interactions per message, and the email interaction is a click to a site you own. That gap is why the cheapest growth move in most social programmes is still a subscribe mechanic.

Both channels are getting harder to measure, in opposite directions. Email lost its open rate to Apple in 2021 and reports against a denominator that is 55% to 60% synthetic. Social kept its metrics and lost its distribution, with a median engagement decline of 18% and denominators that do not match each other. Anyone selling a single number that compares the two has picked which distortion to ignore. Our content marketing ROI statistics page and the statistics hub carry the wider measurement picture.

FAQ

Is email marketing ROI really $36 per dollar?

No, or at least nobody has measured it. The £41 per £1 figure in the DMA Marketer Email Tracker 2026 and the $36 range in Litmus's State of Email 2025 are marketers' own estimates, from 250 and roughly 500 respondents, and Litmus reports that 21% of its respondents measure no email ROI at all. The nearest measured number is Omnisend's $0.155 of revenue per campaign email sent in 2025.

Does email or social media get more engagement?

Per 1,000 audience members per message, email gets 7.4 clicks against 4.8 interactions on Instagram, 1.5 on Facebook and 1.2 on X, using Omnisend's 0.74% click rate and Socialinsider's 2026 per-follower rates. TikTok beats email at 37.3 interactions per 1,000 followers. Email's number counts clicks to your site while the social numbers count mostly likes.

How many followers equal one email subscriber?

About 1.5 Instagram followers or 4.9 Facebook followers per subscriber on interactions per message, computed from Omnisend 2025 and Socialinsider 2026 benchmarks. On TikTok the ratio flips: one follower is worth about five subscribers on engagement per post, though a TikTok engagement is rarely a site visit.

Why are email open rates unreliable in 2026?

Apple Mail accounts for 62.26% of tracked email opens as of July 2026 and Mail Privacy Protection affects 55% to 60% of all opens, according to Litmus. Apple introduced the feature in June 2021 to stop senders using invisible pixels to detect opens. Click rate against emails delivered is the metric with a denominator nobody can inflate.

Is organic social media reach still declining?

Yes on most platforms. The median change across eight platform-year readings from Rival IQ and Socialinsider is -18%, with seven of eight negative or flat. Rival IQ recorded Facebook down 36% and X down 48%; Socialinsider recorded X down 20% and TikTok up 49%, a disagreement caused by different samples and windows.

Should B2B marketers prioritise email or LinkedIn?

Both, for different jobs. Content Marketing Institute's 2025 survey of 1,015 B2B marketers found 76% rate LinkedIn most effective for thought leadership and 54% say the same of email newsletters, while 85% personalise email campaigns against 34% for social content. LinkedIn finds the audience and email talks to the part of it that identified itself.

Sources

1. Omnisend, Email Marketing Benchmarks (2025 data, 20 billion campaign emails and 470 million automated emails across 27,000 brands)
2. Omnisend, Email Marketing Statistics (2026)
3. Litmus, The ROI of Email Marketing (State of Email 2025, nearly 500 marketing professionals)
4. Litmus, Email Client Market Share (July 2026, over 1 billion opens)
5. DMA, Marketer Email Tracker 2026 (25 March 2026, 250 marketers; full report gated) and DMA, From Opens to Outcomes (7 July 2026, the DMA's own statement of the £41 figure)
6. Action Rocket, DMA Email Tracker 2026 key takeaways (31 March 2026, secondary read of the gated DMA report, source of the budget share figures)
7. Mailchimp, Email Marketing Benchmarks (data as of December 2023)
8. GetResponse, Email Marketing Benchmarks (4.4 billion messages sent in 2023)
9. Campaign Monitor, Email Marketing Benchmarks (2021 data, over 100 billion emails)
10. Apple, Apple advances its privacy leadership with iOS 15 (7 June 2021)
11. Socialinsider, Social Media Benchmarks (70 million posts, January 2024 to December 2025)
12. Socialinsider, LinkedIn Benchmarks (1.3 million posts, 16,645 business pages)
13. Rival IQ, Social Media Industry Benchmark Report (February 2025, 4 million posts, 9 billion interactions)
14. DataReportal, Digital 2026 Global Overview Report (13 October 2025, including the GWI brand discovery and Statista ad spend figures it reports) and Global Social Media Statistics (mid-2026 update)
15. Pew Research Center, Social Media Fact Sheet (20 November 2025, 5,022 US adults surveyed February to June 2025)
16. Content Marketing Institute, B2B Content and Marketing Trends (1,015 B2B marketers, fielded June to August 2025), Sprout Social Index (edition XX, fielded September 2024), IAB and PwC Internet Advertising Revenue Report (16 April 2026)

Methodology. Numbers were collected in September 2026 and checked against the original publisher's page, not against statistics roundups. Every rate on this page is published with its denominator, because email and social benchmarks use incompatible ones. Vendor benchmark data is labelled as vendor data with its sample and period. Market-report resellers were excluded entirely. The DMA's £41 figure comes from the DMA's own article of 7 July 2026, and its report page confirms the sample and the publication date, while the full report stays behind a form. Figures older than 24 months are flagged as dated in the text. Last updated 22 September 2026.