Email marketing is not dead. It remains one of the most successful and most affordable marketing mediums.
Emails can be used to drive brand awareness, get sales, and retain customers. During the past ten years, I have worked on the email marketing strategies for magazines like Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and Good Housekeeping and their clients, a subscription model’s almost-daily email campaigns, and an e-commerce sales funnel with ambitious KPIs.
It’s not always easy to create an email that readers will actually open and read, but I pride myself on maintaining an average open rate of 30% and a click rate of 15% for every campaign that I have personally set up. From selling products to creating a solid brand identity, I have set up hundreds of emails in the past.
Emails are still the preferred communication tool for many businesses with 72% of consumers saying that email is their favored conduit of communication with companies they do business with.
Here are a few more interesting facts about email:
- 4.32 billion email accounts exist in the world
- 2.586 billion email users have registered worldwide
- 68% of consumers find email to be their #1 preferred channel for receiving commercial messages
- 66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a direct result of email marketing
- 81% of online shoppers are more likely to make an additional purchase as a result of email
- 61% of consumers say they like to receive promotional emails weekly
- 1.779 million people access email via their mobile phones
Not only is the email marketing pie massive, but you can get a big slice for your business by sending frequent, effective emails to a dedicated list of consumers who are keen to hear from you. For more interesting stats, check out this dedicated website: EmailisNotDead.com
When you are thinking of creating an email campaign, there are a few key performance indicators (KPIs) that you should keep in mind when evaluating the effectiveness of a campaign.
Main metrics for email marketing
Open rate. This metric refers to the amount of people who opened the email you sent. The higher the open rate, the better for your email campaign because it means more people are seeing your content and getting the opportunity to click on your links.
Click rate. This KPI indicates the number of clicks that have been recorded on the newsletter. This metric usually correlates to the traffic you can see in Google Analytics and you can learn a lot about your users by following their journey through your website. The higher the click rate, the more traffic is going to your website.
Bounce rate. The bounce rate speaks to the number of emails that have been returned undelivered due to incorrect email addresses, full mailboxes, spam filters, etc. It’s ideal to keep this rate as low as possible by double-checking your email lists for errors and having a confirmation link sent to your new reader’s email address to check delivery.
Unsubscribe rate. This rate refers to the amount of people who have elected to click on the unsubscribe link in the email. You want this rate to stay as low as possible. A high unsubscribe rate indicates that you are sending too many emails or the contents of your emails are not interesting to your readers.
All of these metrics can be found after you’ve sent an email through an email service provider like Mailchimp. But how do you know what percentage is good as an open rate? Is 30% good or bad as an open rate? And how does it compare across industries?
Mailchimp is one of the biggest email marketing service providers and they send billions of emails to more than 14 million users every month. As a result, they have a lot of email marketing data to use to calculate the average rates across industry. After studying campaigns from one-person-startups to Fortune 500 companies, they found a number of interesting industry benchmarks. is one of the biggest email marketing service providers and they send billions of emails to more than 14 million users every month. As a result, they have a lot of email marketing data to use to calculate the average rates across industry. After studying campaigns from one-person-startups to Fortune 500 companies, they found a number of interesting industry benchmarks.
Benchmarks for Key Performance Indicators
Average Stats by Industry
| Industry | Open | Click | Soft Bounce | Hard Bounce | Abuse | Unsub |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agriculture and Food Services | 24.66% | 3.02% | 0.59% | 0.44% | 0.02% | 0.29% |
| Architecture and Construction | 24.69% | 2.89% | 1.50% | 1.09% | 0.03% | 0.36% |
| Arts and Artists | 27.16% | 2.85% | 0.62% | 0.45% | 0.02% | 0.29% |
| Beauty and Personal Care | 18.46% | 1.97% | 0.38% | 0.39% | 0.03% | 0.32% |
| Business and Finance | 20.93% | 2.73% | 0.66% | 0.55% | 0.02% | 0.23% |
| Computers and Electronics | 20.89% | 2.18% | 1.04% | 0.71% | 0.02% | 0.30% |
| Construction | 22.09% | 1.94% | 1.57% | 1.22% | 0.04% | 0.43% |
| Consulting | 19.35% | 2.24% | 0.92% | 0.71% | 0.02% | 0.29% |
| Creative Services/Agency | 22.35% | 2.62% | 1.09% | 0.90% | 0.03% | 0.37% |
| Daily Deals/E-Coupons | 15.11% | 2.35% | 0.11% | 0.08% | 0.01% | 0.10% |
| E-commerce | 16.71% | 2.34% | 0.30% | 0.24% | 0.02% | 0.23% |
| Education and Training | 21.90% | 2.63% | 0.55% | 0.47% | 0.02% | 0.20% |
| Entertainment and Events | 21.19% | 2.34% | 0.49% | 0.42% | 0.02% | 0.28% |
| Gambling | 18.51% | 3.32% | 0.39% | 0.46% | 0.03% | 0.17% |
| Games | 20.81% | 3.35% | 0.45% | 0.51% | 0.03% | 0.25% |
| Government | 26.24% | 3.61% | 0.48% | 0.39% | 0.01% | 0.13% |
| Health and Fitness | 21.91% | 2.59% | 0.43% | 0.44% | 0.03% | 0.38% |
| Hobbies | 28.44% | 5.17% | 0.31% | 0.25% | 0.02% | 0.23% |
| Home and Garden | 23.80% | 3.50% | 0.58% | 0.40% | 0.03% | 0.37% |
| Insurance | 21.41% | 2.10% | 0.78% | 0.84% | 0.03% | 0.26% |
| Legal | 22.45% | 3.01% | 0.77% | 0.67% | 0.02% | 0.23% |
| Manufacturing | 21.87% | 2.35% | 1.42% | 1.00% | 0.03% | 0.36% |
| Marketing and Advertising | 17.81% | 1.93% | 0.77% | 0.62% | 0.02% | 0.28% |
| Media and Publishing | 22.08% | 4.69% | 0.28% | 0.18% | 0.01% | 0.12% |
| Medical, Dental, and Healthcare | 22.40% | 2.44% | 0.73% | 0.73% | 0.03% | 0.30% |
| Mobile | 19.42% | 2.14% | 0.57% | 0.63% | 0.02% | 0.35% |
| Music and Musicians | 22.77% | 2.85% | 0.57% | 0.43% | 0.02% | 0.29% |
| Non-Profit | 24.90% | 2.77% | 0.49% | 0.40% | 0.02% | 0.19% |
| Other | 23.02% | 2.81% | 0.79% | 0.61% | 0.02% | 0.28% |
| Pharmaceuticals | 20.04% | 2.52% | 0.80% | 0.74% | 0.02% | 0.21% |
| Photo and Video | 25.53% | 3.55% | 0.72% | 0.63% | 0.03% | 0.41% |
| Politics | 22.13% | 2.16% | 0.43% | 0.39% | 0.03% | 0.21% |
| Professional Services | 20.73% | 2.47% | 0.92% | 0.73% | 0.02% | 0.31% |
| Public Relations | 20.07% | 1.64% | 0.81% | 0.61% | 0.01% | 0.21% |
| Real Estate | 20.84% | 1.90% | 0.61% | 0.51% | 0.03% | 0.31% |
| Recruitment and Staffing | 20.69% | 2.19% | 0.53% | 0.60% | 0.02% | 0.31% |
| Religion | 26.39% | 3.12% | 0.19% | 0.17% | 0.01% | 0.12% |
| Restaurant | 21.20% | 1.26% | 0.24% | 0.21% | 0.02% | 0.25% |
| Restaurant and Venue | 21.64% | 1.33% | 0.53% | 0.46% | 0.02% | 0.41% |
| Retail | 20.93% | 2.51% | 0.36% | 0.30% | 0.02% | 0.28% |
| Social Networks and Online Communities | 21.64% | 3.33% | 0.37% | 0.30% | 0.02% | 0.23% |
| Software and Web App | 20.99% | 2.30% | 1.07% | 0.86% | 0.02% | 0.39% |
| Sports | 25.37% | 3.20% | 0.47% | 0.42% | 0.02% | 0.28% |
| Telecommunications | 21.49% | 2.43% | 1.14% | 0.93% | 0.02% | 0.27% |
| Travel and Transportation | 20.59% | 2.18% | 0.65% | 0.49% | 0.02% | 0.24% |
| Vitamin Supplements | 17.12% | 1.80% | 0.28% | 0.23% | 0.03% | 0.25% |
Average Email Campaign Stats by Company Size
What is the average open rate for email marketing campaigns? How do my click rates compare to other people in the industry? How many bounces are okay? How many spam complaints are too many? Learning the answers to these questions will help you to improve your newsletters.
How do your stats compare to these?
| Company Size | Open Rate | Click Rate | Soft Rate | Hard Rate | Abuse Rate | Unsub Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 10 | 21.48% | 2.85% | 0.56% | 0.44% | 0.02% | 0.29% |
| 11 to 25 | 20.59% | 2.44% | 0.58% | 0.46% | 0.02% | 0.24% |
| 26 to 50 | 21.38% | 2.75% | 0.39% | 0.30% | 0.01% | 0.17% |
| 50+ | 22.77% | 2.76% | 0.55% | 0.51% | 0.02% | 0.20% |
Email marketing is not dead.
With a bit of hard work, it’s not impossible to get campaigns to deliver an average of 30% open rate across the board with around 15% click rate. With a careful balance of great copy, simple formatting, and eye-catching elements, it’s possible to achieve great success with email campaigns.
Email marketing tools
The following email marketing tools are free to use, with some limitations.
Mailchimp (Design & sending)
Canva (Design only)
Freshworks (Design & sending)
Mailerlite (Design & sending)
