New Zealand essential email insights report 2026

Essential email continues to deliver strong results

Out now - the 2026 edition of the Cumulo9 Essential Email Insights Report provides a detailed look into how organisations across New Zealand are communicating through essential email in an increasingly competitive digital landscape.

Now in its sixth edition, the report draws on millions of essential business emails delivered through C9 Transact during 2025. Unlike traditional email reports focused primarily on marketing campaigns, this report focuses specifically on transactional and business-critical communications such as invoices, payslips, reminders, notifications and updates.

The latest findings confirm that essential email continues to outperform traditional campaign email when it comes to engagement and reliability, reinforcing the ongoing value of trusted digital communication.

Open rates remain high despite changing inbox behaviour

One of the report’s key findings is that essential emails achieved an average open rate of 63.6% during 2025. While this represents a second consecutive year of decline, it remains significantly higher than the global campaign email average open rate of 43.5%.

The analysis indicates that this shift may reflect changing user behaviour, increasing inbox competition and growing digital fatigue rather than a reduced importance of email itself. Recipients are becoming more selective about the emails they engage with, making relevance, timing and deliverability more important than ever.

Interestingly, the report also found that open rates are becoming more evenly spread across the week, with stronger engagement now occurring later in the week and during weekend periods.

Engagement quality is improving

While overall opens declined slightly, engagement quality showed positive growth. Click-to-open rates increased from 6.2% to 6.7%, indicating that recipients who open essential emails are taking more meaningful action.

This suggests organisations are improving how they structure and present important communications, particularly through clearer calls-to-action, more relevant messaging and better user experiences across mobile and desktop devices.

The findings reinforce the importance of designing communications that are concise, accessible and action-oriented, especially as inbox competition continues to grow.

Email deliverability continues to have a significant impact on business

The report also highlights the growing importance of deliverability. Less than 1% of all C9 Transact essential emails failed to reach recipient inboxes during 2025, significantly below the wider industry average of around a 90% deliverability rate.

For organisations sending high volumes of essential communications, even small delivery failures can create substantial operational costs when businesses are forced to fall back on print and traditional mail alternatives.

The report explores how authentication protocols such as SPF, DKIM and DMARC, alongside strong database management practices, play a critical role in maintaining inbox placement and protecting sender reputation.

Download the full report

As digital communication continues to evolve, understanding how recipients engage with essential email has never been more important.

The New Zealand Essential Email Insights Report 2026 provides practical insights, benchmark data and strategic recommendations for organisations looking to improve engagement, deliverability and communication performance.

Download the full report to explore the latest trends shaping the future of essential digital communication.