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.
What You’ll Learn
- Email Marketing Benchmarks: Open Rates
- Email Marketing Benchmarks: Click-Through Rates
- Email Marketing Benchmarks: Bounce Rate
- Email Marketing Benchmarks: Unsubscribe Rate
- How to Set Your Email Marketing Benchmarks
- Email Marketing Metrics By Industry
- Email Marketing Metrics FAQs
We all know we need to be using email marketing, right?
That’s because email continues to be one of the absolute most effective ways to reach and communicate with your customers.
In fact, in 2021 alone, people sent and received approximately 319.6 billion emails. That number will likely increase to 376.4 billion by 2025.
With numbers 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, 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.
One aspect of open rates to keep in mind has to do with Apple’s recent update. The recent update to iOS 15 on Apple devices allows users to keep marketers from seeing if and when they opened emails for privacy purposes. However, you will still be able to measure other crucial metrics such as click-through rates, unsubscribe rates, and more.
If you’re wondering what the top-performing industries’ open rates look like, here they are, according to recent data from HubSpot:
- Real Estate — 41.6%
- Finance — 41.4%
- Health and Fitness — 41.2%
Meanwhile, the three worst-performing industries include:
- Information Technology (IT) — 33.5%
- Online Courses and Coaching — 33.8%
- Construction — 33.9%
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.
- Send emails to recipients at the right time of day when they’re most likely to check and interact with their inboxes. The right time will depend on your audience and when they’re most active on email.
- Getting people to voluntarily opt into your emails instead of tricking them to get into your email list. If people willingly get into your list, they’re more likely to be interested in what you offer them.
Best and Worst Days to Send Emails for Open Rates
If you want to achieve the best open rates for your emails, recent research has found the best and worst days for sending emails to get the best response.
According to Moosend, the following are the best and worst days for email campaigns:
- Thursday is the top-performing weekday that generates the highest open rates.
- The second-best day is Tuesday
- The worst day to send emails is Saturday
Also, keep in mind the best and worst times to send emails. Moosend found that the best time is around 8-9 AM, while the worst time is after 6 PM.
2. Click-Through Rate
Click-through rate (CTR) you’re probably pretty familiar with.
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.
The email benchmarks by industry will also vary for click-through rates. According to HubSpot, the following are the top-performing industries when it comes to this metric:
- Construction — 14.5%
- Architecture — 14.3%
- Telecommunications — 13.6%
Conversely, the worst-performing industries with the lowest CTR include:
- Software and Web App — 2.9%
- Finance — 4.9%
- Insurance — 5.5%
You might notice here that a few of the industries that have high open rates have low click-through rates, and vice versa. This could be due to the fact that the more people open your emails, the lower your click-through rate is likely to be, but you could also see a low click-through rate if you’re not optimizing your emails the right way.
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 correlates 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
- Include buttons — Buttons with hyperlinks in your email content will stand out and encourage more people to click through after opening your email
- Be consistent in your messaging and content — People will come to know and trust your brand if you have a defined, unique voice that your recipients welcome with each email
Email marketing benchmarks: timing helps CTR- Social Media Today
In addition to open and click-through rates, another connecting metric to monitor is the click-to-open rate (CTOR), which you can calculate by using this formula: unique clicks/unique opens.
You can incorporate CTOR with open rates and click-through rates into a ratio that helps optimize performance. Specifically, you’ll want to aim for the golden ratio of 20-2-10. This number indicates a 20% open rate, 2% click-through rate, and 10% CTOR, which is the ideal place to be with your email marketing benchmarks.
3. Bounce Rate
Bounce rate measures the total amount of your emails that aren’t being delivered.
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.
Email bounce rate is another one of those email marketing benchmarks that varies greatly from industry to industry.
HubSpot found that the following are the top-performing industries regarding bounce rates:
- Telecommunications — 0.20%
- Media — 0.20%
- Computers and Electronics — 0.23%
The worst-performing industries, on the other hand, include the following:
- Architecture — 1.32%
- Construction — 1.15%
- Legal — 0.72%
Often, your bounce rate is out of your control. The issue 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.
- Ensure your content is relevant – If you mislead audiences with a subject line that doesn’t truly apply to the message in your content, this is a sure way to get people to click away.
- Give people different content choices – Some recipients in your email list may want to see specific types of content more than others. Give people some options, such as tips, offers, announcements, and others to give the subscriber a level of control.
4. Unsubscribe Rate
Chances are, you already know you don’t want a high one of these.
Your unsubscribe rate is, of course, the number of recipients who choose to unsubscribe from your list.
Not sure which email marketing benchmarks to set for your unsubscribe rate? Here are the top-performing industries regarding unsubscribe rates according to HubSpot data, which can give you an idea of what your benchmarks might look like:
- Telecommunications — 0.7%
- Media — 0.09%
- Computers and Electronics — 0.14%
The worst-performing industries include:
- Architecture — 0.46%
- Beauty and Personal Care — 0.41%
- Health and Fitness — 0.36%
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.
- Make sure emails load fast enough – If emails contain too much content or otherwise take too long to load, this is a quick way to lose subscribers out of frustration.
- Regularly send emails on a set schedule – Taking this step is a good way to avoid annoying audiences and keep your emails predictable for subscribers. If you strike a good balance between consistency and annoyance, you can keep more people in your email list.
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.
Here’s a checklist to help you set your email marketing benchmarks more effectively:
- Have specific goals in place — Set overall goals and objectives 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.
- Establish benchmarks to measure against goals — 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 standards.
- Continually monitor your benchmarks to help with decision-making — As always, keep a close eye on all campaign reports to make sure you’re continuously working towards your benchmark goal. All of this information can be found and tracked through most email software, including MailChimp, Constant Contact, Emma, etc.
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 Mailerlite’’s most recent averages can be found here.
Arts & Artists:
- Open Rate: 26.03%
- Click Rate: 2.66%
- Bounce Rate: 0.33%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.31%
Beauty & Personal Care:
- Open Rate: 39.89%
- Click Rate: 2.74%
- Bounce Rate: 0.35%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.41%
Business & Finance:
- Open Rate: 36.49%
- Click Rate: 2.14%
- Bounce Rate: 0.34%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.21%
Consulting:
- Open Rate: 36.89%
- Click Rate: 2.37%
- Bounce Rate: 0.34%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.21%
Creative Services:
- Open Rate: 39.98%
- Click Rate: 3.4%
- Bounce Rate: 0.36%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.34%
Ecommerce:
- Open Rate: 36.59%
- Click Rate: 2.62%
- Bounce Rate: 0.30%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.29%
Education & Training:
- Open Rate: 36.16%
- Click Rate: 2.85%
- Bounce Rate: 0.33%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.19%
Entertainment & Events:
- Open Rate: 36.16%
- Click Rate: 2.4%
- Bounce Rate: 0.30%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.27%
Finance:
- Open Rate: 41.44%
- Click Rate: 2.04%
- Bounce Rate: 0.55%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.29%
Health & Fitness:
- Open Rate: 41.23%
- Click Rate: 2.83%
- Bounce Rate: 0.31%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.36%
Hobbies:
- Open Rate: 36.52%
- Click Rate: 3.95%
- Bounce Rate: 0.25%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.21%
Legal:
- Open Rate: 39.26%
- Click Rate: 2.45%
- Bounce Rate: 0.72%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.26%
Marketing & Advertising:
- Open Rate: 38.26%
- Click Rate: 2.88%
- Bounce Rate: 0.29%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.25%
Media & Publishing:
- Open Rate: 33.35%
- Click Rate: 3.51%
- Bounce Rate: 0.22%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.18%
Medical, Health & Dental:
- Open Rate: 46.29%
- Click Rate: 3.14%
- Bounce Rate: 0.67%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.39%
Non-Profit:
- Open Rate: 42.43%
- Click Rate: 3.76%
- Bounce Rate: 0.41%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.18%
Public Relations:
- Open Rate: 35.89%
- Click Rate: 1.86%
- Bounce Rate: 0.38%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.14%
Real Estate:
- Open Rate: 41.59%
- Click Rate: 3.61%
- Bounce Rate: 0.31%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.21%
Software and Web App:
- Open Rate: 39.77%
- Click Rate: 1.16%
- Bounce Rate: 0.57%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.3%
Travel & Transportation:
- Open Rate: 39.36%
- Click Rate: 2.68%
- Bounce Rate: 0.35%
- Unsubscribe Rate: 0.26%
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. Knowing the email benchmarks by industry will give you a clear understanding of where you are in relation to competitors to help you maintain a competitive edge.
Say, for example, you’re in the health & fitness industry and have an average unsubscribe rate of 0.32%.
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.
Don’t fall behind on this, either. Keep a close eye on your industry averages to determine which steps to take to optimize your campaigns. Doing so will help you stay ahead of the competition in the long term.
FAQs for Email Marketing Benchmarks
Want to know more about email marketing benchmarks? Here are a couple of FAQs to answer your questions.
1. What Are Email Marketing Benchmarks?
These are metrics that can help you gauge the success of your email marketing efforts. They can include data like open rates, click rates, and bounce rates that help you make decisions that continually improve your campaigns.
2. What is the Benchmark for Email Unsubscribe Rates?
The ideal email unsubscribe rate will depend on the average in your industry, but aiming for somewhere less than 0.5% is often best.
Let’s Take Your Email Marketing to the Next Level
Ignite Visibility has a team of expert digital marketing professionals. We leverage the power of email and can integrate SMS to help businesses reach customers efficiently, helping them achieve their marketing goals. Our expert strategists work closely with clients to understand their unique needs and design customized email strategies that maximize return on investment. Whether it’s creating automated campaigns or testing new headlines, we handle every aspect of email marketing to ensure our clients receive optimal results.
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