Every year, the GDMA Email Benchmark gives us a rare view across borders: billions of emails, thirty-plus countries, one shared dataset. As contributors, we get to spot the patterns that don’t make it into the headlines. And this year, one country told a story we don’t see often: a genuine, measurable turnaround.
Spain.
It’s the 9th largest email market in Europe by volume, with 83,319 campaigns and 2.1 billion emails sent in 2025. Not a giant, but a serious player. And when you compare its 2024 and 2025 numbers side by side, something interesting happens.
Insight 1: A deliverability turnaround you don’t see every day
Let’s start with the metric that jumps off the page.
In 2024, Spain’s soft bounce rate (SBR) sat at 1.45%, well above the global average of 0.9%. In 2025? It dropped to 0.49%. That’s not a marginal improvement. That’s a 66% reduction in twelve months.
The hard bounce rate followed the same path, falling from 0.67% to 0.45%. And the acceptance rate climbed from 97.88% to 99.07%, comfortably above the 98.6% global benchmark.
Why does this matter? Bounce rates are the closest thing email has to a discipline metric. Hard bounces mean dead addresses. Soft bounces mean temporary failures. Both eat away at the sender’s reputation if left unchecked. A drop of this magnitude usually points to one of two things: a serious investment in list hygiene, or stronger sender authentication and infrastructure. Most likely, both.
Whatever the cause, Spanish senders went from clearly above the global average on bounces to comfortably below it. That’s the kind of year-on-year movement most markets dream of.
Insight 2: The opens are fine, the clicks need work
Now for the trickier story.
Once Spanish emails arrive in the inbox, the engagement picture is more mixed. The unique open rate (OR) in 2025 sits at 32.9%, essentially in line with the global average of 33.3%. So far so good.
But click metrics lag.
- Click to Open Rate (CTO): 6.2% vs. global average of 7.68%
- Click Through Rate (CTR): 2.1% vs. global average of 2.95%
In other words, Spanish recipients open at a global-average rate, then click at roughly 70% of the global benchmark.
Why does this matter? The open-to-click gap is one of the most useful diagnostic signals in email marketing. It tells you where the funnel is leaking. When opens are healthy but clicks lag, the limiting factor isn’t deliverability, sender reputation, or subject lines. It’s what happens after the open: the offer, the layout, the call to action, the relevance of the content to the segment.
For comparison, neighbouring European markets like the Netherlands (CTR 6.2%) and the UK (CTR 4.4%) show that the click ceiling is much higher than Spain’s current level.
Insight 3: Recipients are loyal, mostly
Here’s a counterintuitive finding. For a market with below-average click rates, Spain has a notably low unsubscribe rate.
The unsubscribe rate (UR) is roughly 0.07%, well below the global average of 0.14%.
What is the unsubscribe rate? It represents the percentage of recipients who opt out of your mailing list after receiving an email. A high rate signals issues with relevance, frequency, or quality. A low one signals tolerance, and at best, genuine interest.
That tolerance is significant. It suggests Spanish recipients aren’t being overwhelmed or annoyed by the email they receive. Frequency is sensible, list quality is solid, and brand trust is largely intact. The engagement gap isn’t a list-quality issue; it’s a content-and-offer issue.
Insight 4: But the spam button is being pressed more often
Now for the warning sign, and it’s a small but important one.
Spain’s spam complaint rate (SCR) for 2025 sits slightly above the global average of 0.01%, with a clear uptick compared to 2024 (which was below the line). In absolute terms, we’re still talking about very small numbers, well within the 0.3% threshold that Google and Yahoo now enforce. But the direction of travel matters.
Why does this matter? Spam complaint rate is the closest thing email has to a trust metric. It’s the rate at which recipients actively tell their inbox provider: “I didn’t want this.” When unsubscribe rates are dropping, and complaint rates are rising at the same time, it can signal that the easy-out unsubscribe option is becoming less visible, or that some senders are pushing audience patience harder than they used to.
It’s worth keeping an eye on. Not panic territory, but worth a conversation with your deliverability team.
Insight 5: The 11 AM Monday market
One last finding, and it’s a structural one.
Spanish senders cluster their campaigns into a remarkably narrow window. Looking at the sending time data, over 20% of all 2025 campaigns go out in a single hour: 11:00. By comparison, most European markets distribute their sends much more evenly across the working day.
Monday is the dominant send day, with Thursday a strong second. Weekends drop off sharply, as expected.
Why does this matter? Concentrated sending windows aren’t inherently good or bad. But when an entire market converges on the same hour, the inbox itself becomes a battleground. If you’re sending to Spain at 11 AM on a Monday, you’re competing for attention with thousands of other senders doing exactly the same thing. There’s an interesting opportunity here for marketers willing to test off-peak send times.
So what’s the lesson here?
Spain in 2025 is a market in motion. The deliverability transformation is real, and it deserves credit. Bounce rates don’t halve by accident. That kind of improvement comes from deliberate, often unglamorous work on list hygiene and authentication.
But the engagement side hasn’t caught up. Opens are average, clicks are below average, and the slight uptick in spam complaints suggests some senders are still finding the limits of audience patience.
For the rest of us, the message is threefold:
- Deliverability work pays off, but it takes time. Spain’s year-on-year jump shows that meaningful improvement is possible within a single benchmark cycle, if the investment is there.
- Opens are not the same as engagement. If your inbox placement is healthy but your clicks aren’t moving, stop optimising subject lines and start looking at offers, layouts, and segmentation.
- Watch the small warning signs. A creeping spam complaint rate, even within tolerance, is the kind of signal worth catching early. The 0.3% threshold is the cliff edge, not the goal.
