40+ Email Marketing Statistics For 2026: Usage, Facts & Trends

Think email marketing is dead? Think again.

Email is not just alive. It is still one of the most powerful ways to reach your audience and grow your business and we have the stats to prove it.

We’ve rounded up 40+ email marketing statistics that show exactly where email stands today. You will see why it continues to outperform other marketing channels and which trends you need to pay attention to if you want to stay ahead.

These insights show not just how email marketing is changing but how you need to adapt to get the best results for your business.

Email marketing statistics & benchmarks

Let’s start by looking at the latest industry benchmarks uncovered in Campaign Monitor’s most recent email marketing report. These benchmarks are useful to measure your own performance against.

The average email open rate is 17.8%

That’s the average open rate across all industries and is based on data gathered from over 30 billion emails sent throughout 2019. Are you performing under or above average? (Campaign Monitor)

Government organizations have the highest open rates (30.5%)

Government organizations dominate when it comes to open rates. Interestingly, this figure represents an increase of more than 10% from last year, in which the average was 19.79%. (Campaign Monitor)

Automotive and aerospace have the lowest open rates (12.6%)

On the other end of the spectrum, we have the automotive and aerospace industry. They saw one of the biggest drops in open rates from last year, falling from around 17% to 12.6%. (Campaign Monitor)

Retail only has a 13.9% average open rate

Interestingly, retail also sits at the bottom end of the table, dropping from an average open rate of 15.2% to 13.9% this year. This represents the high level of competition in the eCommerce and retail space, which impacts email open rates.

It’s not all bad news though – retail businesses also generate high email engagement and excel at driving consumer action.

This makes a strong argument for focusing more on CRO and creating high-converting emails if you’re a retailer in order to make the most of the customers that do open your emails. (Campaign Monitor)

The average email click-through rate is 2.65%

Again, that’s the average across industries and again, Government agencies were the top performers, with a 4.1% average CTR. (Campaign Monitor)

The average click-to-open rate is around 14%

14.3%, to be exact. In case you didn’t already know, the click-to-open rate is the percentage of people who have opened your email that go on to click a link or image within it. It’s arguably a better measure of how well your email copy/content is performing that CTR.

The image below shows how this average breaks down across industries. (Campaign Monitor)

Both bounce (0.7%) and unsubscribe rates (0.1%) are on the rise

Average bounce rates (the percentage of recipients who don’t receive your email) and unsubscribe (the percentage of a mailing list that unsubscribe from communications) both improved compared to last year.

This shows us that marketers are getting better at keeping their lists clean and improving deliverability. (Campaign Monitor)

Tuesdays have the highest open (18.3%) AND unsubscribe (0.2%) rates

Take this statistic with a pinch of salt though, as the differences are very small and almost insignificant. Don’t get too hung up on chasing the ‘best day’ and focus on creating effective email campaigns. (Campaign Monitor)

Importance/relevance of email marketing

Below are some more email marketing statistics that highlight just how important email still is to marketers and businesses, and why.

Around 80% of SMBs say email is their most important customer acquisition/retention channel

Interestingly, significantly more SMB marketers voted for email than organic search, paid search, and social media. When it comes to acquiring new customers and retaining them, it looks like nothing beats email. (eMarketer)

Email is 40x more effective than social media for customer acquisition

That’s right, email is 40 times as effective as both Twitter and Facebook combined at acquiring new customers. (McKinsey)

U.S. companies spent an estimated $3.07 billion on email marketing in 2019

This is according to estimates from Statista. If accurate, that means companies increased their spending on email marketing by around a third in just 5 years. (Statista)

Email traffic converts better than both social and search traffic

4.24% of email traffic leads to purchases, whereas only 2.49% of search traffic and 0.59% of social traffic does the same. This makes sense as email subscribers are usually much further down the sales funnel and are more likely to have been through a lead nurturing process. (The American Genius)

93% of marketers say email is their top content distribution channel

This is according to a 2017 report from the Content Marketing Institute. The second most popular channel used to distribute content was LinkedIn. (Content Marketing Institute)

49% of American consumers want weekly brand emails

This shows that consumers aren’t sick of receiving your promotional emails. On the contrary, they want to receive them every single week. If you’re not sending them frequently enough, you may be missing out. (