Want better results from your email campaigns?
Then you need to set – and track – your benchmarks.
In this article, I’ll go over which metrics matter the most, how you can set your benchmarks, and what the averages are by industry.
We all know we need to be using email marketing, right?
(In case you didn’t, heads up: you need to be using email marketing).
That’s because email continues to be one of the absolute most effective ways to reach and communicate with your customers.
Check this out: on a daily basis, US consumers interact with 11 brands on average via email. Comparatively, they only interact with 9 brands via Facebook and 8 brands via Twitter.
See, email wins.
And the thing is, email’s only getting bigger.
In fact, as of 2017, there were 3.7 billion global email users. By 2021, that number’s expected to increase to 4.1 billion.
With number’s like that, it’s no wonder email’s one of the leading marketing channels for businesses across industries.
But like any other marketing strategy, shooting blind’s no way to go about it.
Before diving head in, you need a solid strategy, realistic expectations, and numbers to work towards.
That’s why it’s so important to understand and analyze the email marketing benchmarks specific to your industry.
Email Marketing Benchmarks: The Metrics That Matter
While the numbers will vary per industry, the actual metrics you’re looking for will stay pretty similar.
These are your standard measurements of success when it comes to email marketing, and these are the numbers you’ll want to constantly monitor – and improve – as you run your campaigns.
Keep in mind, these aren’t the only metrics that matter (for a more in-depth list, click here), but they’re the ones we’ll be using for industry comparison.
1. Open rate
Open rate is, as it sounds, a measurement of how many people actually open your emails.
It’s calculated like this: emails opened/emails delivered.
Several factors can affect your open rate, one of the biggest being the overall size of your list. The bigger the list, the lower the open rate tends to be.
Generally, to improve your open rate you’ll want to focus on:
- Your subject line. This alone can make or break your open rate. Make it catchy, make it concise, and make it clear.
- Put in some personalization. A study from Marketing Dive found that personalized subject lines increased open rates by 50%.
- Segment your campaigns. “Segmentation” is the new watchword in email marketing – and for good reason. Campaigns segmented by interest, user behavior, etc. see a 14.32% higher open rate than non-segmented campaigns.
Email marketing benchmarks: catchy headlines and personalization increase open rates
Click-through Rate: Email Marketing Benchmarks
Click-through rate (CTR) you’re probably pretty familiar.
This one plays a major role in almost every marketing initiative, and no surprise here: it definitely matters when it comes to email marketing.
To clarify, CTR is the number of email recipients who click on a link in your email.
The formula looks like this: Total number of clicks/emails delivered.
CTR is heavily influenced by a few factors, including seasonality (holiday campaigns, etc. tend to see higher ones) and, most importantly, the quality of the content you put in your emails.
To see high CTR, take a look at the following tips:
- Personalize your email – Personalized emails improve CTR by an average of 14% and conversions by 10%
- Establish a first-name basis – CTRs tend to be higher when the recipient’s first name is used in the subject line
- Get social – including social sharing buttons correlate with a 158% increase in CTR
- Pay attention to timing – Saturdays are best, with over 9% CTR, and 6 AM is the hour with the highest CTR
Email marketing benchmarks: timing helps CTR. Image courtesy of Social Media Today
3. Bounce Rate
Bounce rate measures the total amount of your emails that aren’t being delivered.
Email marketing benchmarks: pay attention to bounce rate
We typically separate bounces into two categories: a hard bounce, which signals an invalid or nonexistent email address, and a soft bounce, which generally points to a temporary delivery error like a full inbox.
Often, bounce rate is out of your control. The issues could simply be an abandoned email address or even a server error.
But there are a few factors that you can control that have an effect on bounce rate, such as:
- Opt-ins. This one isn’t even an option anymore, thanks to the introduction of the GDPR.
- Keep your email lists up-to-date. An outdated email list more than likely contains some outdated email addresses, so do yourself a favor and give it a nice spring cleaning every once in a while
4. Unsubscribe Rate – Email Marketing Benchmarks
Chances are, you already know you don’t want a high one of these.
Unsubscribe rate is, of course, the number of recipients who choose to unsubscribe from your list.
Womp womp.
Not surprisingly, no one wants to see a big number here.
And while unsubscribes are, unfortunately, inevitable, you can cut down on them by:
- Delivering quality content. Don’t skimp on content. Continue to deliver on what you promised, and make sure it’s engaging and covers a subject in-depth (or includes a link to that in-depth subject)
- Segmenting your list. Again, this is key here. By separating your list into clear segments, you can tailor the content to suit the interest of each recipient
- Set up drip campaigns. Drip campaigns are designed to push subscribers further down the sales funnel by providing thoughtful, engaging content every step of the way. Make sure you have a solid stack of emails planned (and segmented) to help retain as many subscribers as possible.
Email marketing benchmarks: set up drip campaigns to keep subscribers engaged. Image courtesy of Active Campaign
How to Set Your Email Marketing Benchmarks
While you’ll want to keep tabs on all the metrics above, you’ll still need to determine which of them are most important to the success of your campaign.
To do that, you need to have a set overall goal and objective to work towards.
For example, if you run a dental office, your ultimate goal might be to book more appointments. To do so, you would want to send as much traffic as possible through to your website.
In that case, the most valuable metric would be the click-through rate, because that’s a key indicator of how much traffic is coming through email marketing.
Once you’ve determined which metrics matter the most, you’ll want to set benchmarks to compare them to.
Ideally, you’ll do this at both an internal and industry level. Internally, it’s important to monitor how your campaigns perform over time.
If you’ve run email campaigns in the past, you can set a benchmark based on past performance. If your CTRs in the past averaged 8%, you’ll have a goal to work towards (and exceed).
If you’re newer, it can be super helpful to set a goal based on industry standard.
All of this information can be found and tracked through most email software, including MailChimp, Constant Contact, Emma, etc. As always, keep a close eye on all campaign reports to make sure you’re continuously working towards your benchmark goal.
Email Marketing Benchmarks by Industry
So, wondering how your metrics stack up?
Here’s an in-depth list of the most important email metrics separated out by industry.
Note: percentages will vary slightly depending on the software reporting. This isn’t an exhaustive list, and the full report of MailChimp’s most recent averages can be found here.
Arts & Artists:
- Open Rate: 26.03%
- Click Rate: 2.66%
- Hard Bounces: .34%
- Soft Bounces: .57%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 29%
Beauty & Personal Care:
- Open Rate: 17.01%
- Click Rate: 1.76%
- Hard Bounces: .28%
- Soft Bounces: .38%
- Unsubscribe Rate: .31%
Business & Finance:
- Open Rate: 20.47%
- Click Rate: 2.59%
- Hard Bounces: .46%
- Soft Bounces: .63%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 21%
Consulting:
- Open Rate: 18.96%
- Click Rate: 2.15%
- Hard Bounces: .58%
- Soft Bounces: .88%
- Unsubscribe Rate:.28%
Creative Services:
- Open Rate: 21.59%
- Click Rate: 2.51%
- Hard Bounces: .70%
- Soft Bounces: 1.02%
- Unsubscribe Rate: .37%
Daily Deals/E-Coupons
- Open Rate: 14.92%
- Click Rate: 2.30%
- Hard Bounces: .07%
- Soft Bounces: .12%
- Unsubscribe Rate: .10%
E-commerce:
- Open Rate: 15.66%
- Click Rate: 2.07%
- Hard Bounces: .19%
- Soft Bounces: .31%
- Unsubscribe Rate: .24%
Education & Training:
- Open Rate: 21.8%
- Click Rate: 2.48%
- Hard Bounces: .37%
- Soft Bounces: .54%
- Unsubscribe Rate: .20%
Entertainment & Events:
- Open Rate: 20.41
- Click Rate: 2.19%
- Hard Bounces: .32%
- Soft Bounces: .48%
- Unsubscribe Rate: .38%
Health & Fitness:
- Open Rate: 20.06%
- Click Rate: 2.18%
- Hard Bounces: .33%
- Soft Bounces: .41%
- Unsubscribe Rate: .37%
Hobbies:
- Open Rate: 27.35%
- Click Rate: 4.78%
- Hard Bounces: .19%
- Soft Bounces: .33%
- Unsubscribe Rate: .23%
Legal:
- Open Rate: 21.14%
- Click Rate: 2.71%
- Hard Bounces: .54%
- Soft Bounces: .75%
- Unsubscribe Rate: .22%
Marketing & Advertising:
- Open Rate: 16.48%
- Click Rate: 1.74%
- Hard Bounces: .47%
- Soft Bounces: .71%
- Unsubscribe Rate: .26%
Media & Publishing:
- Open Rate: 21.92%
- Click Rate: 4.55%
- Hard Bounces: .15%
- Soft Bounces: .29%
- Unsubscribe Rate: .12%
Medical, Health & Dental:
- Open Rate: 21.09%
- Click Rate: 2.25%
- Hard Bounces: .59%
- Soft Bounces: .69%
- Unsubscribe Rate: .29%
Non-Profit:
- Open Rate: 24.11%
- Click Rate: 2.57%
- Hard Bounces: .35%
- Soft Bounces: .5%
- Unsubscribe Rate: .20%
Public Relations:
- Open Rate: 20.21%
- Click Rate: 1.63%
- Hard Bounces: .46%
- Soft Bounces: .72%
- Unsubscribe Rate: .19%
Real Estate:
- Open Rate: 19.67%
- Click Rate: 1.8%
- Hard Bounces: .4%
- Soft Bounces: .57%
Unsubscribe Rate: .29%
Social Networks & Online Communities:
- Open Rate: 21.13%
- Click Rate: 3.16%
- Hard Bounces: .23%
- Soft Bounces: .38%
- Unsubscribe Rate: .22%
Travel & Transportation:
- Open Rate: 20.03%
- Click Rate: 2%
- Hard Bounces: .39%
- Soft Bounces: .63%
- Unsubscribe Rate: .24%
Email Marketing Benchmarks: Putting the Numbers Together
Knowing where you stand compared to the industry average is invaluable information.
Why? Because it tells you exactly what area you need to improve on – and where you’re in the clear.
Say, for example, you’re in the health & fitness industry and have an average unsubscribe rate of .32%.
Now, for most industries that’s a pretty high rate. But that specific industry sees an average unsubscribe rate of .37%, meaning you’re below the average – and can breathe a sigh of relief.
On the other hand, if you’re in the Marketing & Advertising industry and only seeing an open rate of 12%, you’ll know you’re falling behind industry standards.
In that case, you’ll want to review the methods listed above to try and increase that percentage, which means taking a hard look at your subject lines and email segments.
Remember, you can access all this information through your email software reports.
Email marketing benchmarks: reporting through MailChimp
Wrapping Up Email Marketing Benchmarks
Like any marketing initiative, it’s crucial to have a goal to work towards when it comes to email marketing.
Remember, it’s best to do this both internally and by industry, so make sure you keep close tabs on both your own numbers and industry standards.
