Average Email Open Rates By Industry + Email Benchmarks
Your marketing emails are only as good as the number of people who open them. However, knowing whether your emails are performing well enough can still be a challenge.
That’s why we’ve put together these industry-specific email benchmarks to help you gauge your email performance and optimize your strategies.
In this post, we’ll explore the average email open rates across various industries, key factors affecting these rates, and best practices to improve email open rates.
But first, we’ll take a quick look at how these metrics are calculated. If you want to skip ahead, just use the table of contents below.
What is email open rate in email marketing?
Email open rate is the percentage of recipients who open an email out of the total number of emails delivered.
This figure helps to measure the effectiveness of your email subject lines, sender reputation, and email timing.
Why is it important to monitor your email open rates?
- Open rate indicates engagement: A high open rate shows that your emails are relevant to your audience, while a low open rate may indicate a lack of interest.
- Affects overall email campaign success: If your emails are not opened, other metrics like click-through rate and conversion rate will suffer in return.
- Helps optimize subject lines: Open rates can help you test different subject lines to improve the performance of your email marketing campaigns.
How to calculate email open rates
The email open rate is calculated by dividing the number of unique email opens by the total number of emails delivered, multiplied by 100.
Open Rate = (Unique Opens / Delivered Emails) x 100
For instance, if 1,000 emails were delivered and only 250 were opened, your email open rate would be: (250/1000)×100=25%
What is click-through rate (CTR)?
Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of email recipients who click on a link within the email content.
Just like the open rate, CTR helps to measure engagement. A high CTR means recipients are highly interested in your content.
The CTR is calculated by dividing the number of unique link clicks by the total number of emails delivered, multiplied by 100.
CTR = (Unique Clicks / Delivered Emails) x 100
For instance, if 1,000 emails were delivered and 100 recipients clicked a link, the CTR would be:
(100/1000)×100=10%
What’s a good open rate and click-through rate for email marketing campaigns?
A good email open rate typically falls between 20% and 30%. This is considered the average rate across most industries. Anything below 20% is generally low.
If your click to open rate is between 30% and 40%, it’s performing well, while anything above 40% is considered excellent.
On the other hand, the average click-through rate ranges from 2% to 5% across all industries. A CTR between 5% and 10% shows that your email content and CTAs are engaging enough, while above 10% is considered outstanding.
Average email open rates by industry (email benchmarks)
Understanding industry-specific email open rates is crucial for benchmarking your performance and fine-tuning your strategy.
Email open rates vary significantly by industry. Below is a comparison of average open rates from Mailchimp, MailerLite and other email marketing platforms.
Overall average open rates
Mailchimp analyzed millions of emails across 45 industries, focusing on campaigns sent to at least 1,000 subscribers. According to the data collected, the average open rate was 21.33%.
MailerLite also examined data from 52 industries, including campaigns sent to at least 1000 subscribers. They found that the average open rate stood at 42.35%.
When combined, the overall average email open rate across all industries is approximately 31.84%.
Industry-specific email open rates
Email open rates differ significantly based on the nature of the industry.
Here’s a comparison of average open rates across different industries from two major sources:
| Industry | Mailchimp | MailerLite | Combined Average (2025 Estimate) |
| Medical, Dental, Healthcare | 21.72% | 46.29% | 34.01% |
| Government | 28.77% | 46.30% | 37.54% |
| Non-Profit | 25.17% | 42.43% | 33.80% |
| Hobbies | 27.74% | 36.52% | 32.13% |
| Retail | 18.39% | 40.56% | 29.48% |
| Games | 21.10% | 29.88% | 25.49% |
| Education and Training | 23.42% | 37.81% | 30.62% |
| Health and Fitness | 21.48% | 41.23% | 31.36% |
| Manufacturing | 19.82% | 41.07% | 30.45% |
| Legal | 22.00% | 39.26% | 30.63% |
| Marketing and Advertising | 17.38% | 38.26% | 27.82% |
(Sources: MailerLite, Mailchimp)
Top-performing industries
Certain industries consistently achieve higher-than-average open rates. This is mostly due to the importance of their content and audience engagement levels.
Some of the top-performing industries from the data collected include:
- Government Emails (37.54% average open rate)
Government agencies experience high open rates because their emails often contain essential information regarding policies, regulations, or public services.
Since recipients consider these communications crucial, they are more likely to open them.
- Medical, Dental, and Healthcare (34.01%)
Emails from healthcare providers, medical institutions, and dental services also perform well.
Patients and clients often look out for appointment reminders, test results, and health-related updates, which makes this industry’s open rates significantly high.
- Non-Profit Organizations (33.80%)
Non-profit organizations often send emotionally compelling emails, such as donation requests, success stories, and updates on social causes.
Such emails often appeal to recipients’ sense of purpose and philanthropy, making them attract high engagement levels.
Industries with moderate open rates
Some industries fall in the middle range in terms of open rates. Their open rates fall somewhere close to the average open rate across all industries.
Industries with moderate open rates include:
- Hobbies and Special Interests (32.13%)
Industries catering to audiences with hobby-related content (e.g., music, photography, fitness) tend to engage subscribers well.
People open these emails because they align with personal interests. However, engagement levels can fluctuate depending on the seasonality of trends.
- Retail and E-commerce (29.48%)
The retail sector has a moderate open rate, with strong fluctuations depending on seasons.
While major sales like Black Friday and Cyber Monday can generate high open rates, frequent marketing emails often lead to subscriber fatigue, reducing engagement over time.
Lower-performing industries
Some industries experience lower open rates due to the high volume of promotional emails or lower perceived values.
Examples of industries with low open rates include the gaming industry (25.49%), advertising and marketing.
Many promotional emails from gaming companies, such as game updates, new releases, or in-game offers, get ignored due to their high frequency and perceived low importance.
Additionally, gamers may prefer in-app notifications over email updates.
Factors affecting email open rates
Several factors influence how many recipients will open your marketing emails.
Once you understand how to optimize these factors, you can significantly improve the performance of your email marketing campaigns.
Here are some of the most common factors affecting email open rates.
Email subject line
The email subject line is the first thing recipients see before they open your emails. It also determines whether the email gets opened or ignored!
A compelling, clear, and engaging subject line increases the chances of an email being opened.
Subject lines that use curiosity, urgency, personalization, or numbers generally have higher open rates and increase engagement.
Content relevance
If your emails are always relevant and valuable to your recipients, they’ll reward you with high open rates.
Audience segmentation and personalization play a key role in making content more relevant and appealing.
For instance, as a fashion retailer, sending winter outfit recommendations to customers living in a tropical region may yield lower open rates than if you tailor content based on location.
Email send times
Email open rates are also highly dependent on the email sending times.
People tend to check their emails at specific times, and more frequently on specific days of the week. This means that sending emails at the right moment increases the chances of engagement.
Sending emails on a Monday morning when inboxes are flooded may result in lower open rates than sending on a Tuesday or Thursday afternoon.
Sender name
Email recipients are more likely to open an email from a recognizable sender rather than an unfamiliar or generic name.
A trustworthy sender name builds credibility and can boost email open rates.
For instance, an email from “John at Imami Consulting” feels more personal and engaging than “noreply@imamiconsulting.com”.
Email frequency
Sending emails too frequently can lead to email fatigue.
This may cause recipients to start ignoring your emails or unsubscribing from your list. On the other hand, sending emails too occasionally may make them forget about your brand.
If you conduct an A/B test for email frequency, you may find that daily promotional emails experience lower open rates than a well-balanced weekly newsletter.
Email list quality
A well-maintained email list ensures that emails reach engaged and interested recipients.
However, a poor-quality list with inactive, unverified, or invalid addresses can lower open rates significantly.
That’s why it’s advisable to regularly clean your email list by removing inactive subscribers.
Your industry
Different industries have different email open rate benchmarks.
Some industries naturally register higher engagement due to their audience’s interests, while others struggle with lower open rates.
For instance, non-profits and education organizations often see higher open rates while retail businesses experience lower open rates due to high competition.
10 best practices for improving email open rates and click-through rates
As an email marketer, working through improving open rates and click-through rates is the best thing you can do for your email marketing campaigns.
Here are ten best practices to improve your email open and click-through rates.
Segment your recipients
Among the most important practices for improving email open rates is audience segmentation.
Divide your email list based on criteria such as demographics (age groups and gender), location, purchase history, or engagement levels.
You can then send different marketing emails to different groups according to their interests to increase their chances of engagement.
Write compelling subject lines
As mentioned, recipients read the subject lines first to determine whether to open your emails or ignore them.
Therefore, you need to write highly compelling subject lines to increase open rates. A well-crafted subject line should be short, engaging, and create curiosity or urgency.
Use action words and numbers, highlight a benefit, or ask a question to make your subject lines stand out.
Example:
Instead of a generic “Our Latest Newsletter” subject line, write “5 Time-Saving Hacks for Your Morning Routine!” to attract higher open rates.
Personalize subject lines
There’s no subject line as compelling as a personalized subject line.
Adding a personal touch to your emails makes them feel more relevant to the recipient, increasing open rates.
The best way to personalize is to use the recipient’s first name. You can also personalize by mentioning their past purchases or referencing their interests.
For example: “Emma, Running Out of Your Favourite Moisturizer, Here’s a Special Discount for You!“
Optimize email send times
Sending emails at the right time ensures they don’t get buried in a crowded inbox.
To improve open rates, try to send emails when your recipients are most active.
You can start by analyzing past campaign data or performing A/B tests for different send times (and days) to determine which combination works best for you.
Generally, B2B emails perform best between 9 am-12 noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays. B2C emails, on the other hand, perform well in the evenings or weekends when consumers are more relaxed.
Use emoji in subject lines
Emojis can make your email stand out in a cluttered inbox and boost open rates.
Email recipients are likely to open emails with emojis since they have visual appeal and convey emotions.
However, be careful to use them sparingly and ensure they enhance the message rather than replace words.
Example: “Ready to Take Your Productivity to the Next Level 🚀?”
Collect feedback from unsubscribers
Losing email subscribers is inevitable, but it can be beneficial if you understand why they’re leaving.
To improve your email strategy, add a simple exit survey to help you know why they’re unsubscribing.
You can add simple options like:
- Too many emails
- Not relevant to me
- I got what I wanted
- I prefer a different communication channel
Use the feedback collected to refine your email content, send frequency, and targeting, to reduce future unsubscribes.
Run A/B tests
A/B tests can significantly inform your email strategy and help improve email open rates.
A/B testing (or split testing) involves sending two versions of an email to determine which one performs better.
The best practice is to test only one variable at a time.
Example of A/B tests for different variables:
- Subject lines: “Get 20% Off Today!” vs. “Limited-Time Offer: 20% Off!“
- Call-to-action (CTA): “Shop Now!” vs. “Claim Your Discount“
- Send times: Monday morning vs. Wednesday midday
Once you identify what resonates best with your audience, you stick with it and optimize with time for even better results.
Avoid spam triggers
Certain words, phrases, and formatting styles can cause your emails to be flagged as spam.
Emails that land in the spam folder are unlikely to be opened, and this will reduce your open rates.
When writing emails, avoid excessive use of words like “Free,” “Urgent,” “Act Now,” and multiple exclamation marks. Also, avoid writing subject lines in ALL CAPS.
Clean your list occasionally
Over time, some email subscribers become inactive, which can affect your open rates.
Regularly clean your list by identifying subscribers who haven’t opened an email in 3–6 months.
Send a re-engagement email asking if they still want to receive your emails. You can then remove those who don’t respond.
Though the number may reduce, a clean email list will ensure improved deliverability, open rates, and overall email campaign performance.
Resend unopened emails
Finally, you may think they ignored them, but many recipients miss emails because they didn’t see them or were busy at the time.
Resending an email to those who didn’t open it can help to improve engagement.
The best way is to wait 48–72 hours before resending the emails. You can slightly modify the subject line to make it more compelling and trigger action.
For instance, if the original subject line was “Exclusive Offer: 20% Off All Shoes!“, the resend could say “Final Chance: Your 20% Discount Ends Soon!“.
Resending emails can help recover lost engagement and boost open rates.
Frequently asked questions
What is the industry standard open rate for emails?
The standard email open rate varies by industry. Generally, a good open rate falls between 20% and 30%. Currently, the standard open rate across all industries is 29.5%.
Which industries have the highest email open rates?
Industries with the highest email open rates include government, non-profits, medical and healthcare. On the other hand, industries that register the lowest open rates include advertising, marketing, and gaming.
What’s a good email open rate?
A good email open rate typically ranges between 20% and 30%. However, this can vary depending on the industry and the quality of your email list. Regularly comparing your metrics to industry benchmarks can provide valuable insights for improving your email marketing strategy.
Final thoughts
Knowing your industry’s average email open rates can help you set realistic goals and optimize your own internal metrics in email marketing.
While some industries enjoy high open rates due to the critical nature of their emails, others struggle with low engagement due to high email frequency and market saturation.
No matter your industry, the best practice is to periodically analyze trends, refine your approach, and focus on delivering valuable content to your audience.