Comparing Email Benchmarks

Throughout the year, the various Email Service Providers (ESPs) gather and examine the data from the millions of emails each send out from their customers. The Open, Click-Through, Bounce and Unsubscribe rates are computed, as are benchmarks by industry, day of week, time of day and more. Here is what six of the leading ESPs reported in 2019 for two key metrics – % Open Rate and % Click-Through Rate.

The Open Rates ranged from 14% to 24%, with the Click-Through Rates (CTR) ranging from 2.6% to 6.9%. The average of these five ESPs for each metric are 20.2% (Opens) and 4.0% (CTR) respectively. While these metrics provide a place to start for comparison of an email campaign performance, looking at the industry data will provide a truer picture (contact us if you’d like to see a specific industry’s data). But ultimately, you should be benchmarking against your own performance data.

Your contact list is unique and every email campaign is a learning opportunity. Take a look at the performance metrics for your past emails and see if you notice any patterns. Use your own averages as a benchmark for comparison. And test to see what works. Do A/B tests to two different groups to test metrics for subject lines, design, time of day, day of week and so forth.

Although Opens and CTRs are important, these benchmarks are just the tip of the iceberg and other factors need to be considered. In order to really complete the picture, look at the purpose or objective of the email and measure that conversion metric, and of course when applicable, the revenue generated.