Email Marketing Benchmarks for 2025

At Mailmunch, we operate with the idea that emails should act as a relationship builder rather than a distraction.

That is why we focus on creating campaigns backed by data-driven insights. Since we have a data bank of insights, in this blog, we are providing you with all the essential insights you require to help you create email marketing campaigns based on your industry.

In this blog, we will discuss the following:

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• An introduction to email marketing benchmarks
• Types of email marketing benchmarks
• A comparison of KPIs and Benchmarks
• Industry, Opt-in, Autoresponse, and Landing page conversion-based metrics
• How you can improve your email marketing benchmarks

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If you have any additional questions, don’t be afraid to reach out our support team is always ready to assist you with all your queries.

Understanding Email Marketing Benchmarks

Email marketing benchmarks are key performance indicators (KPIs) that allow marketers to calculate the effectiveness of their email campaigns. 

They include metrics such as open rates, click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and unsubscribe rates.

Some factors that influence email marketing benchmarks include:

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• Industry Type: Different industries have varying benchmarks. For example, e-commerce typically sees higher open and click-through rates than B2B services.
• Email Frequency: Sending emails too frequently can lead to higher unsubscribe rates, while infrequent emails may result in lower engagement.
• List Quality: A clean, segmented list will yield better engagement metrics than a generic one. Regularly removing inactive subscribers can help improve rates.
• Content Relevance: Personalized and targeted content generally performs better than generic messaging.

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Types of Email Marketing Benchmarks

Monitoring these email marketing benchmarks is essential for evaluating your campaigns' effectiveness and identifying areas for improvement. 

By comparing your metrics against industry averages, you can make informed decisions to enhance your email marketing strategies.

1. Open Rate

• Definition: The percentage of recipients who open your email.
• Average Across Industries: 20-25%
• Significance: Indicates how compelling your subject lines are and how well you engage your audience.

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2. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

• Definition: The percentage of recipients who clicked on one or more links within the email.
• Average CTR: 2-5%
• Significance: Reflects the relevance and quality of your email content.

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3. Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR)

• Definition: The percentage of recipients who clicked a link after opening the email.
• Average CTOR: 10-15%
• Significance: Measures the effectiveness of your email's content in encouraging engagement once opened.

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4. Conversion Rate

• Definition: The percentage of users who completed a desired action (e.g., purchasing or signing up for a newsletter) after clicking through your email.
• Average Conversion Rate: 1-3%
• Significance: Indicates how successful your email is in driving specific actions from recipients.

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5. Bounce Rate

• Definition: The percentage of emails not delivered to recipients' inboxes.
• Average Bounce Rate: Below 2%
• Significance: Helps assess the quality of your email list and identify deliverability issues.

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6. Unsubscribe Rate

• Definition: The percentage of recipients who opt out of your mailing list after receiving an email.
• Average Unsubscribe Rate: 0.1-0.5%
• Significance: Provides insights into your content relevance and overall audience satisfaction.

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7. Spam Complaint Rate

• Definition: The percentage of recipients who mark your email as spam.
• Average Spam Rate: Below 0.1%
• Significance: Indicates how recipients perceive your emails and can impact your sender's reputation.

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What Is An Email Open Rate?

One of the most used metrics in email marketing is email open rate. This is the percentage of a list’s recipients that open your email compared to how many emails you delivered to that list. 

For example, if you sent 1,000 emails and only 300 emails were opened, your open rate would be 30%.

This is a useful metric for evaluating the quality of your subject lines and the interest your audience has in your brand. 

As email marketing benchmarks vary significantly according to industry, comparing your open rates to those benchmarks by industry can give you a better sense of performance.

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Are Open Rates Still A Good Metric?

Open rates have historically been a staple of measuring performance and are becoming less reliable due to privacy changes. 

Mail Privacy Protection from Apple increases open rates by automatically marking emails as opened even if the recipient doesn’t look at it. 

While this shift has caused some marketers to begin tracking performance more engagement-driven with metrics like click-through rates (CTR) and conversions, many marketers are still looking for a more solid and reliable metric to use.

However, for reference purposes, open rates are still a valuable place to start analyzing against other metrics and email marketing benchmarks from 2023 and 2024 compared to your industry.

What Is Ctr (Click-Through Rate) In Email Marketing Campaigns

A metric called click-through rate (CTR) is a portion of the people who chose to click at least one of the hyperlinks within your email. 

In this sense, CTR is often regarded as a more solid engagement metric than open rates because it shows something the reader has taken action on. 

If your CTR stays low consistently, it may mean your email content isn’t hitting the mark, links are irrelevant, or you are targeting the wrong audience.

Kpis Vs. Benchmarks: Why Is Benchmarking Important?

In email marketing, KPIs and benchmarks serve different purposes but are both essential for a successful strategy:

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KPI = Key Performance Indicators; measures of how well the campaign achieved specific objectives. For example, if you want to drive traffic to a new blog post, your KPIs would include CTR, conversion rate, and the number of blog visits generated from the campaign.

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An industry average metric, like a Benchmark, is an average metric across your industry that you can use to compare your performance. With benchmarks, you can determine weaknesses or areas of strength. For example, the b2b email marketing benchmarks 2024 indicate a 5% CTR, a 7% CTR showing good performance, and a 3% CTR would be an area for improvement.

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Email Marketing Benchmarks and Metrics

Understanding essential email metrics allows you to optimize and modify your email marketing strategies to improve engagement. 

Here are some fundamental metrics and how they contribute to evaluating campaign success:

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• Open Rate: That is the percentage of your email clicks. Email appeal benchmarked across industries.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): This metric measures the percentage of people who clicked a link in your email. It signifies how engaged your content is.
• Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR): This metric tells you how much your content engages those who open the email.
• Unsubscribe Rate: This measures the percentage of people who ‘opted out’ after receiving an email. High unsubscribe rates can indicate issues with the content, frequency, or mismatch between the audience and the content.
• Bounce Rate: It tracks the percentage of emails that couldn’t be delivered. This metric is divided into “soft bounces,” or temporary delivery issues, and “hard bounces,” or permanent issues, such as invalid addresses.

Email Marketing Benchmarks By Industry

Here are some 2024 email marketing benchmarks broken down by industry, covering essential metrics for comparison:

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Double Opt-In vs Single Opt-In Rates by Industry

Double opt-in and single opt-in processes have different engagement impacts. Double opt-in often leads to higher-quality lists, while single opt-in can grow your list faster but with potentially lower engagement.

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Landing page conversion by industry

A high click-through rate doesn’t always mean conversions, so tracking landing page conversion rates is essential. 

Here are industry benchmarks to help you understand where your campaigns stand:

Number of autoresponders in a cycle

We have analyzed the average engagement metrics change depending on the number of customer emails.

Here are our results

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How To Improve Email Metrics

Optimizing key metrics continually is essential to achieving or exceeding industry email marketing benchmarks and maintaining a high-performing email campaign. 

Below are several proven strategies for improving open rates, click-to-open rates (CTOR), unsubscribe and bounce rates, and overall engagement. 

Let’s dive in:

1. Increase email open rate

Email open rate is the percentage of recipients who open an email. It is a crucial metric for measuring the effectiveness of the email subject line and determining brand relevancy. Increasing this metric ensures that your message reaches a larger audience.

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• Optimize Subject Lines: Write short, “attention-grabbing” subject lines. You can capture curiosity with questions, numbers, or humor. Additionally, don’t go overboard with all caps or punctuation spam.
• Leverage Personalization: Personalised subject lines can greatly impact your open rates. This is where you could use the recipient’s name and location to create personalized
• Experiment with Timing: Try sending emails at different times and days and watching how your audience engages. By A/B testing, you can determine when your audience is most engaged.
• Use Preheader Text: The text is almost always disregarded as an extension of the subject line. Get in the habit of crafting the subject to complement the subject and adding a teaser to encourage more opens.

2. Increase email click-to-open rate

The click-to-open rate (CTOR) is the ratio of people who clicked on a hyperlink after opening the email, or in other words, the success of a message or a CTA (Call To Action).

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• Craft Engaging Content: Email content must be limited in focus, concise, and relevant to the subject. More relevant and engaging content comes through if you target content segments to an audience based on its demographics or past behavior.
• Design Visually Appealing Emails: Layout and visuals make a massive difference when an email is clean and easy to read. Change your headings and subheadings, use bullet points, and make sure your images are relevant to your message.
• Include Clear CTAs: The CTA buttons must be prominent, including phrases such as ‘See more’ and ‘Start.’ Ideally, CTA should sit above the fold because, otherwise, visitors might have to scroll down quite a bit before engaging.
• Use Dynamic Elements: GIFs, countdowns for limited offers, and embedded videos create a more immersive and interactive email experience.

3. Decrease unsubscribes and bounces

While normal, unsubscribes and bounce rates can also indicate problems with your list health or message relevance. 

Tracking and managing these metrics on a regular basis will keep your list engaged and help you avoid sending useless emails, lowering your cost of non-delivery.

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• Regularly Clean Your Email List: Periodically remove inactive subscribers and invalid emails. Identify and remove people who have not engaged for as long as six months. Use data on opens, clicks, and recent activity to determine that.
• Set Expectations Clearly: When people sign up for your email list, inform them of your email's frequency and content types. If the content or frequency doesn’t match what the subscriber thought they would get, you’ll get quick unsubscribes.
• Use Double Opt-In: The double opt-in process helps reduce hard bounces and ensures subscribers want to actually receive your emails. It can also prevent you from getting into spam traps and ensure your lists stay high-quality.
• Manage Frequency: Sending too many emails to subscribers will usually result in a higher unsubscribe rate. First, offer ways to change email frequency and/or stop emails so users choose how to participate and when.

4. Optimize email metrics with testing

That means continuous testing and iteration, trying and seeing what works, what doesn’t, and what’s related. A/B testing and experimentation allow you to try and improve things over (hopefully) time.

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• A/B Testing on Subject Lines: You can test the subject line variations to determine the best writing, length, or style. Start run testing on small chunks of your list to find which one works, and then roll that winner out to your entire list.
• Experiment with Content and Design: Offer different types of content to see what your audience is drawn to better. Also, try different email formats, such as newsletters vs. one-off promotions, to see which produces better engagement.
• Optimize for Mobile: Most users open emails on mobile devices, so ensure your email is mobile-optimized. Ensure the content is in a readable format and layout consistency, yet avoid the elements that make it possible for high bounce and unsubscribe rates on mobile.
• Evaluate CTAs and Placement: Your CTAs alone affect how well they engage users. You can test which point in the email most people will convert.

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Using these strategies allows you to more closely align your campaigns with email marketing benchmarks 2023 and 2024, depending on the objective you are targeting. By doing continuous testing, analysis, and adjustments with real-time feedback, you will keep your competitive edge in your email marketing scenes.

Key Takeaways

If you are looking to have effective email marketing campaigns by 2025, it is important to align with industry benchmarks. Here’s how focusing on these metrics supports your strategy:

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• Understanding Metrics: To understand how well your campaigns perform, you’ll know what the open rate, click-through rate (CTR), bounce rate, and unsubscribe rate mean.
• Benchmark Comparison: Comparing your metrics to industry standards helps you identify your strengths and improve performance.
• Optimizing Strategies: Benchmark insights allow you to fine-tune things like subject lines, content, and calls to action to create more effective campaigns with your subscribers.
• Driving Engagement: Paired with benchmarks, showing that your content reaches or exceeds a goal means reaching your audience and building customer loyalty.
• Achieving Long-Term Growth: Building lasting engagement, consistently improving against benchmarks drives showing underpins sustained growth and improves ROI during campaigns.

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When your emails stay aligned with email marketing benchmarks, they remain relevant, effective, and able to deliver results continuously.

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