Email benchmarks

Benchmarks vary by industry. Compare to your vertical, not generic averages.

Open rate

• E-commerce broadcast: 20-30%
• B2B SaaS: 25-35%
• Newsletters (engaged niche): 40-60%
• Transactional: 50-80%

Click rate

• Broadcast: 1-3%
• Targeted automations: 5-15%
• Highly-segmented behavioral: 10-20%+

Unsubscribe rate

Should be under 0.5% per send. Above that signals list or content problems.

What to do with this

• Compare your metrics to category benchmarks monthly, internal improvement against bad baseline still loses
• Watch click rate more than open rate post-iOS, opens are inflated and unreliable, clicks remain honest
• When unsubscribe rate exceeds target, pause broadcasts and fix list quality before sending more
• Don't over-rotate on industry averages, your specific list dynamics may be better or worse than category average and that's OK
• Set targets slightly above category median, matching average is acceptable, beating it by 10-20% is the sign of a real program