The content of this article is provided for informational purposes only. You should always obtain independent business, tax, financial, and legal advice before making any business decision.
With social media, SEO, and content marketing dominating companies’ attention and budget, you may wonder: Is email marketing still relevant?
Here’s the short answer: Yes. Email marketing campaigns continue to deliver a strong return on investment – on average, you can expect to see $36 for every $1 you spend.1
That said, getting your emails opened by recipients poses a significant challenge. With inboxes often cluttered with numerous promotions and updates, standing out enough to prompt an open has become increasingly difficult. Marketers must experiment with email delivery timing, craft compelling subject lines, and ensure their emails don’t accidentally end up in the spam folder.
The first step to unlocking the power of email marketing campaigns? Understanding your email open rate. Read on to learn more about this essential metric and key tactics that may help improve yours.
Email marketing open rate refers to the percentage of marketing campaign emails opened by recipients.
You’ll frequently hear marketers obsess over open rate metrics because they provide insights into the effectiveness of a company’s email marketing efforts. A high open rate indicates that recipients find the emails relevant, increasing the chances that they complete a desired action, whether that’s making a purchase, signing up for a loyalty program, or leaving a glowing review.
To better understand and improve your email marketing strategies, it's essential to compare your email open rate benchmarks against industry averages and competitors. This not only highlights areas for improvement but also helps you identify successful subject lines, content, and call-to-actions that compel recipients to complete a suggested task.
The formula to calculate an email open rate is:
Open rate = ((Unique opens)/(Total emails delivered)) x 100
To break it down:
Say you sent out 1,000 emails, and 300 recipients opened the email. Using the formula, your open rate would be 30%.
However, just knowing this number doesn’t mean much. Instead, you’ll need to compare it against the average open rates in your industry to see whether your campaigns are performing at, above, or below average.
Click-to-open rate (CTOR) is a metric used in email marketing to measure the effectiveness of the email content itself.
Unlike the open rate, which measures how many people open an email, CTOR calculates the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link within the email after opening it. This metric is also distinct from click-through rate (CTR), which measures the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link out of the total number of emails that were delivered3 (whether they were opened or not), offering a broader view of engagement across the entire email campaign.
To calculate CTOR, follow this formula:
CTOR = ((Number of clicks)/(Number of opens)) x 100
So, if an email is opened 100 times and receives 25 clicks, your CTOR would be 25%.
The average open rate for email marketing can depend on factors such as your industry and your target audience. Therefore, it can be difficult to quantify a good open rate for all businesses in all sectors. Research by HubSpot2 suggests that 20% or over is a worthy open rate. Nonetheless, there is significant variation between different industries and sectors.
Industry benchmarks offer a glimpse into how your email campaigns compare to those of your competitors. Given how open rates can vary significantly across industries due to differences in audience engagement, email frequency, and content relevance, understanding these benchmarks will help you better gauge the success of your marketing strategies.
Industries with highly engaged niche audiences, like health and fitness or beauty, often see higher open rates because their content closely aligns with their audience's interests. Conversely, industries like construction or manufacturing may experience lower open rates due to less frequent email use or content that is less directly tied to immediate consumer interests or needs.
Below are a few examples of average email open rates by industry – compiled in a study that analyzed marketing emails sent to at least 1,000 subscribers via Mailchimp.2 These include companies ranging from solopreneur startups to small businesses to major enterprises. Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number.
Industry: Average email open rate
Research your industry to identify a standard open rate to use as a benchmark in your marketing strategy.
If your email open rate is lower than the industry average, don’t panic. To improve performance, start by following email marketing best practices:
As the first thing that email recipients see, your subject line is crucial for achieving a better open rate. After all, it serves as the introduction to your email content; it's the first impression and often the determining factor in whether your email is opened or ignored.
Given the swift pace at which individuals scan their inboxes, a well-crafted subject line is essential for capturing attention and competing against countless other emails vying for the same instant engagement. Use these tips to optimize your subject lines:
To determine your winning subject lines, consider testing and refining them through methods like A/B testing. In this instance, A/B testing involves sending one email with the standard subject line to a subset of your audience while the same email with a new headline is sent to another subset of your audience. This helps identify the more effective subject line and provides insights into your audience's preferences and interests.
For example, you could compare a straightforward subject line like "Summer Sale Starts Now" with a more urgent "Last Chance: Summer Sale Ends Tonight!" to gauge the impact of urgency on open rates. Alternatively, testing the impact of personalization could mean comparing a generic subject line like “Check Out Our Exclusive Offers” with one that uses the recipient’s name, like “John, Check Out Our Exclusive Offers,” to see how personal touches influence engagement.
By benchmarking different subject lines, you can gather valuable data that informs your overall email marketing strategy. Understanding what resonates with your subscribers ultimately leads to improved open rates and, by extension, more successful email campaigns.
The spam (or junk) folder is where email providers store unsolicited, irrelevant, or potentially harmful emails (e.g., phishing attempts or scams) to protect their users. While the spam folder appropriately removes this content from our inboxes, overly aggressive filters can sometimes accidentally block legitimate emails, mistaking them for spam.
If your open rates are unexpectedly low compared to the benchmarks we’ve highlighted above, your emails might be getting caught in spam filters. In other words, recipients aren’t opening your emails because they aren’t seeing them in the first place.
To investigate if your emails are being affected by spam filters, start by checking your email service provider's deliverability reports. These reports can show you how many of your emails are reaching inboxes, how many are bouncing, and how many are being marked as spam. Additionally, look for feedback loops that some ISPs provide, which can tell you if recipients are marking your emails as spam.
Separate from the issue of spam filters is the challenge of managing spam complaints, which should be a top priority for any email marketer. Spam complaints occur when recipients mark your emails as spam, signaling to email providers that your messages may be unwanted or irrelevant.
High spam complaints can significantly harm your sender reputation, consequently leading to lower open rates of future email campaigns. This in turn can affect the long-term success and scalability of your marketing efforts.
To improve deliverability and reduce the chances of your emails being flagged as spam, take these steps:
Leveling up your email marketing is a solid first step to a more effective marketing strategy. Next up? Leveraging social media marketing – use our social media marketing guide to get started.
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