Ever wonder how to compare the success of your email campaigns to others in your industry? You need to know some of the key email marketing metrics, such as open rate. The email marketing open rate is the first key metric that gauges the success of an email campaign.
Want to learn more about this benchmark? Read our guide. 📙
This article can help you better understand what an email marketing open rate is, outline what a good and average open rate for an email based on the industry is, teach you how to calculate it, and more.
So, let’s begin. 🏁
What Is Email Open Rate?
An email open rate is a key email marketing benchmark that shows the percentage of recipients who open an email out of the total number sent. 📧
For example, an email marketing open rate of 25% means that 25 out of 100 recipients opened your email.
Although email open rate alone doesn’t determine the success of email marketing campaigns, understanding this metric is important for marketers & business owners.
The email open rate helps marketers assess how compelling & persuasive their subject line is and how effectively their email attracts the initial interest of their recipients.
A higher open rate for emails indicates that your email subject lines are tempting and your prospects are interested in your email content. Conversely, a lower email open rate can damage the sender’s reputation and eventually affect deliverability.
What Is a Good Open Rate for Email Marketing Campaigns?
Almost 82% of businesses use email marketing, and 99% of email users claim to check their inboxes at least once daily.
Many struggle with improving the open rate for email campaigns, however. That’s why more marketers are wondering this simple but important question: What is a good email marketing open rate?
Recent surveys by Omnisend in 2024 found that the opening rate of email marketing increased from 2020 to 2024 according to various variables like industry.
So, the answer to a good email open rate can vary from one industry to another or from other factors.
However, we reviewed some studies on good email open rates and concluded that good open rates ranged from 15% to 28% across all industries, averaging 20%.
In our opinion, when your email open rate reaches above 20%, this can be a good number. 👍
Therefore, you can take any number higher as a sign that your email campaigns are working well.
Read on to find out a good open rate for the industry you’re operating in.
What Is the Average Open Rate for Email Marketing?
There is no standard answer to this question. That’s why average email marketing open rates vary across various factors, including industries, business types, geographic regions, the day of the week, and even desktops or mobile devices.
Let’s get right into the details. 👇
Average Email Open Rate by Industry 🛠⛓️
According to Constant Contact’s report as of August 2024, which was conducted on more than 200 million emails sent from customers, their average email open rates by industry and business type they specified are given in the image below.
Look at your industry average in the chart above. If your email open rate is close, great!
Notes:
- The overall average open rate for all industries is 32.55%.
- Companies that offer child care, family, and social services typically have the highest open rates between 39% and 47%.
Average Email Open Rate by Region 🌏
Wondering what’s a decent email open rate for your region?
So now, let’s explore what happens in 20 different geographic regions based on a recent report by Benchmark about the email open rate.
According to the 2023 report, the regions with the highest open rates, like Japan, the US/Canada, and China, average between 28% – 31%.
Average Email Open Rate by Day of the Week 📅
According to Campaign Monitor’s 2022 report, the average email open rate based on days to send an email campaign is as follows:
The above table shows Monday is the most effective day of the week, with an average open rate of 22%, as well as Saturday & Sunday have the lowest open rates (20%).
Average Email Marketing Open Rate by Mobile Device vs. Desktop 📱💻
Today, 90% of people tend to check their emails on their mobile devices.
Can you guess what your prospects do when you send them an email that is not optimized for mobile phones? Do they open it?
Definitely, they deleted it, and they won’t be opened.
Mobile-optimized emails have a higher open rate compared to desktops.
The table below indicates the average email marketing open rate by device type, according to a recent mobile vs. desktop email marketing open rate report:
Based on the statistics mentioned above, in 2025, it’s critical to optimize your emails for mobile phones or use responsive email design to improve email open rates and reach more ideal audiences.
How Do You Calculate the Open Rate for Email Marketing?
If you use email marketing tools like Mailchimp or HubSpot, the open rates for your email campaigns are already measured.
However, it’s beneficial to email marketers to know how the email open rate is calculated.
Calculating your email campaign open rate is very simple. Just divide the number of individuals who opened your email by the total number of emails you sent and multiply the outcome by 100.
To make it easier to understand how to calculate it, use the following 2 formulas: 👇
1#. Formula
Open Rate (%) = (Total Opened Emails ÷ Total Emails Sent) x 100
Let’s put the formula into practice: Assume that you have 280 subscribers on your email list. If 70 of them open the emails, your email open rate will be 25%.
(Divide 70 by 280, and you get a result of 0.25, and finally multiply it by 100)
💡 Important note:
It’s important to know that the bounced emails are not counted in the email open rate calculation.
Let’s illustrate it with an example.
Suppose you send an email to 200 subscribers. Out of these 200 emails, 20 emails bounced or failed to reach their inboxes. Now, the total number of delivered emails is 180.
If you have bounced or undelivered emails in a campaign, the formula for calculating the open rate is as follows:
2#. Formula
Open Rate (%) = (Opened Emails ÷ Number of Emails Sent – Number of Bounced Email) x 100
4 Crucial Factors in Affecting the Email Marketing Open Rate
Now that you know what the email open rate is and how it is calculated, let’s examine the four significant factors that can affect your email open rate: 👇
1. Personalized Subject Line
Research reveals that 34% of recipients consider the subject line to be the most important factor in opening an email. Also, 69% of people mark emails as spam before opening them just because of their subject line.
Accordingly, send emails with personalized, catchy, and compelling subject lines. As a matter of fact, adding a name to the email subject line helps you capture attention in crowded inboxes.
2. Right Timing
Interestingly, studies of email campaigns indicate that 23% of all email opens occur within the first hour of delivery. Therefore, after 24 hours, the chance of opening them will reach below 1%.
Consequently, the right timing is critical to email open rates and campaign success.
📌 Bonus tips:
- To determine the best time to send your campaigns, know your audience.
- Use marketing automation. It can help you schedule your email campaigns and send them at the right time for each recipient.
3. Segmented Email List
Segmenting your email list is the cornerstone of any successful email marketing strategy and a key approach to increasing the open rate of your email campaigns.
Audience or email list segmentation refers to grouping audiences by specific criteria, such as geographic regions, demographics, such as name, job title, age, gender, interests or preferences, firmographics, like industry or company, purchase history, customer journey status, and more.
The more targeted & segmented your email list is, the higher your email open rate will be, the more successful your campaigns will be, and consequently the more revenue you will have.
Marketers who use segmented email lists in their campaigns see a 760% revenue increase (Campaign Monitor).
4. Relevant Content
It’s no secret that email content relevancy is one of the most influential factors in determining whether or not prospects open it.
Emails that provide relevant information or that are highly related to recipients’ interests or needs are more likely to be opened, replied to, and engaged with.
How to Increase Email Open Rate? [Best Practices & Tips]
Are you looking to improve your email marketing open rate?
In this section, we’ll teach you five effective ways to improve email open rates and get real results.
1. Sharpen Your Subject Lines
Writing captivating subject lines is often the first tip to drive email open rates.
In order for your subject line to be enticed by subscribers in the first moment, follow these hot tips:
- Personalize it by the sender’s name
- Avoid spammy or triggered words
- Use numbers and statistics
- Ask questions to intrigue recipients
- Utilize the 4U model: Useful, ultra-specific, urgent, and unique
- Keep it short and sweet
- Employ preheaders
- Use emojis in subject lines
2. Optimize Your Emails for Mobile Phones
Today, 81% of all emails are first opened and read on mobile phones, so make sure your emails are compatible with clear and easy-to-read content for mobile viewing.
Here are a few tips on how to optimize emails for mobile:
- Keep your email subject line short
- Use a legible font size
- Avoid too much text or large images
- Strike a balance between visual quality & file size
- Keep it easy to navigate
- Employ a simple, clean, and uncomplicated layout
- Create white space around elements
- Have a clear Call to Action (CTA)
3. Conduct A/B Testing
The best way to boost email open rates is to use A/B testing for everything. This includes the subject lines, senders’ names, sending timing, and email content.
By using this method based on different elements mentioned, it will be easier to identify which ones are working well and who is receiving them.
This will help you have a higher email marketing conversion rate and deliverability rates as well.
4. Clean Your Email List Periodically
If you want to have high open rates, you should make sure that you’re keeping your email list healthy and cleaned consistently.
This means removing invalid and faulty email addresses from your email contact list on a regular basis.
If you have a large volume of invalid or inactive email addresses, your emails are more likely to move to spam folders.
To learn how to clean your email list, here are some simple email list-cleaning tactics and best practices:
- Verify your audiences’ email addresses using an email verification tool like CUFinder
- Identify your inactive or disengaged subscribers through email segmentation
- Remove invalid email addresses and inactive subscribers from your email list
- Check for spam filters and duplicates & typos as well
- Draw up a regular email scrubbing schedule (at least twice a year)
📌 Bonus Tip. Optimize Your Email Strategy with CUFinder
It’s not easy to get a clean and accurate email marketing list. That’s why you need the right email extraction and verification tool like CUFinder.
CUFinder is an all-in-one sales prospecting and lead-generation tool that helps you reach wider targeted customers and grow your business.
CUFinder offers a suite of unique tools to improve your email campaigns, including a free email verifier, person/company email finder, CEO email finder, free Chrome extension platform, and more.
Most importantly, all our email provider services above guarantee access to verified bulk data with a 98% accuracy rate.
Want to see for yourself? Try CUFinder for free today.
5. Include Attention-Grabbing CTA Buttons
An attractive, compelling, clear, and creative CTA can increase the recipient’s interaction with the email, the open rate, and conversions. Hence, it’s highly recommended that all email campaigns have one CTA. According to WiserNotify, emails with a single CTA increase sales clicks by 1,617%.
You can make CTAs using text, images, buttons, videos, links, etc.
To learn how to create a CTA that works well, follow these tips:
- Keep it creative, fresh, and relevant
- Use a bright color for the button
- Don’t make CTAs hard to find
- Avoid staying away from one-word CTAs
- Use as many numbers as you can
- Place the CTA button at the end of the message
- Create a sense of urgency
- Take advantage of the FOMO (Fear of missing out) technique
Wrap Up
There you have it — a complete guide to email marketing open rates containing what it is, how to calculate it, what affects the open rates, and how to improve the open rate of your email campaign.
We hope this guide was resourceful in giving you the instructions you needed to enhance the success of your email campaign. It isn’t hard at all. Just follow the proven strategies and tips mentioned in this article, and you’ll be ready.
Do you want to learn more about email marketing? Visit our Blog and read our articles.
FAQs
1. Is a 20% open rate good?
Yes. A good open rate for email campaigns is between 15 and 28%. Therefore, a 20% open rate is good.
2. What is a good click rate for email marketing?
In an email campaign, a good click-through rate should be between 2% and 5%, depending on the type of industry & business you are in.
3. What are the key email marketing benchmarks?
The key email marketing metrics include open rate, conversion rate, Click-through Rate (CTR), engagement rate, bounce rate, unsubscribe rate, and reply rate.
4. What is the Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR) for emails?
The percentage of recipients who both open your email and click on a link, based on the total number of emails opened, is called the click-through rate.
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