Globally, the last couple of years has been a wild ride for email marketers. The same could be said about a number of things. We can see that these lines are particularly true in the world of email marketing when we look at it.
This is due to some unprecedented email statistics and monumental technological advancements that have shaped the world of online marketing. The open rate is one of the most important statistics in email marketing. Low open rates result in a low conversion rate, which leads to fewer sales of products and less revenue.
If you send emails to customers or clients, it’s pretty obvious that you’ve compared your emails with those of your competitors to determine which one is better in different areas. Regardless of whether you are achieving higher click rates than average or if you are getting click rates below industry standards, everyone sending the email has the same question.
The purpose of this article is to inform our readers about the average email opening rate. Further, we will show you methods for increasing your email opening rate. Let’s get started.
What is the Average Email Open Rate?
What do you mean by Email Open Rate?
For those who are new to email marketing, the term “open rate” could mean a lot of things. The email opening rate is nothing more than a percentage of subscribers of your email list who are opening the specific email out of the total number of subscribers who are listed in your email listing. The email opening rate is the quickest way to know whether your email marketing strategy has been impactful or not.
A quick example of how to calculate the open email rate is: open rate = (total unique opens total recipients) x 100.
- Here you will have two variables that are determining your email opening rate. The first one is the total recipients. These are the total number of people whom you have sent the mail to in the first place.
- The second variable is the total unique opens, which indicates how many of the people who have received the email have actually opened the email.
Now all you have to do is divide the total number of emails opened by the total number of recipients and then multiply it by 100 to find the percentage. One thing to keep in mind here is to only look for unique openings. If the recipient has opened your email twice, that does not mean you will include it twice in the count. It will only have one unique count.
For example, if you have a list of 50 customers and you have sent all of them an email about the new discount that you are offering on the occasion of Christmas, and 24 customers have opened your email to check out the discount, Then your email opening rate would come out to be 48%.
- Open rate = (total unique opens ÷ total recipients) x 100.
- Open rate = (24 ÷ 50) x 100.
- Open rate = 0.48 x 100
- Open rate = 48%
Difference between Email Open Rate and Click-to-Open Rate?
The email opening rate most of the time rests on the quality of the subject lines and optimization done by the sender in the pre-inbox. The click rates are used to showcase whether the email you have designed has panned out or not.
On the other hand, when we look at the click-to-open rate (CTOR), we can see it blends with the open rate and with the click rate into a single metric that will provide information about how relevant your emails are to the recipients. In addition to this, it will also give you an understanding of how effective your email content is when viewed by the customer.
With the use of CTOR, you not only get an idea of how many recipients from your email list have actually opened the email. But you are also getting the metrics of how many of the recipients have clicked on the Call To Action (CTA) button. Given below, we have written down the formula that will help you calculate the CTOR of your emails.
- (total unique clicks total unique opens) x 100 = click-to-open rate
Let’s take an example to showcase how CTOR is different from open email rates. So you have sent emails to 50 of your customers, and out of those 50 customers, 24 of them have opened your emails. From the list of 24 recipients who have opened the email, only 15 have clicked the CTA link that you provided in the email. Thus, we put these numbers into the above formula and see what comes to the outcome.
- (total unique clicks total unique opens) x 100 = click-to-open rate
- Click-to-open rate = (15 24) x 100
- Click-to-open rate = 0.625 x 100.
- The click-to-open rate is 62.5%.
The CTOR is considered good according to various matrices that we have found during our research. This way, from both the examples, we can see the open email rate was 48% and the CTOR was 62.5%, meaning both of them are entirely different from one another.
One more thing: CTOR is dependent on open email rates. But the same cannot be said for email opening rates being dependent on CTOR. The higher the email opening rates, the better chance you will have of securing a good CTOR percentage. A lower email opening rate will eventually cause you to have fewer chances of getting a click from the recipient.
Importance of Having a Higher Email Opening Rate
Even though we know how important the email opening rate is, one should still not determine the overall success of a campaign on a single metric. As a result, there are a number of metrics present in email marketing that define the goals and outcomes you should look for when implementing an email marketing strategy.
On the other hand, you should not be judging your email opening rates specifically for your industry. You need to look at how your email opening rates are doing over time. This gives you a much better understanding of how often people are likely to see your emails and look forward to them.
With the help of opening rates, you can also find out what is working for your email marketing strategy and what attracts the attention of your customers. It could be a discount voucher, or it could be an email regarding the shipment of their product, or anything else. In truth, it is not easy to get your way around the heads of a customer.
So what you need to do is always strive to follow the best email marketing practices and send high-quality email content to the right segment of the audience. This will surely improve your email opening rates significantly over time. That results in a more engaged audience that is willing to put their time into your business or brand.
Make sure you spend an inordinate amount of time writing the subject line. We can put more emphasis on how important it is to write down a truly captivating subject line for each email that you are about to send.
The Gold Standards of Email Marketing In 2022
Every sector has a unique set of guidelines and expectations that you must adhere to in order to succeed. The email marketing benchmarks are the same. For each industry from November 2020 to November 2021, we looked at the email matrices of a tonne of customers to determine the excellent click-through click rate, hard bounce, and unsubscribe rates. The information we have gathered has been directly taken from the batch email campaigns and from the individual accounts. The industry and company size were also self-reported at the time of registration.
What is the Good Open Rate of an Email?
Even if you are writing emails for customers, clients, businesses, and others in any industry or niche, you must maintain a 21.95% average opening rate. This is the overall average opening rate, but when you look at your own industry, you will find that there are a number of factors that affect the health of the opening rate of your emails.
The first and foremost is the quality with which you are writing the subject line of your email. The subject line is the first thing the receiver of your email is going to see. The education industry has a 25% opening rate, while the emails that deal in electronic goods and appliances have an average opening rate of only 19%.
Average Email Opening Rates According to Day of the Week
| Day of the week | Open Rate | Click-Through Rate | Click-to-Open Rate | Unsubscribe Rate |
| Sunday | 20.30% | 2.10% | 10.10% | 0.10% |
| Monday | 22.00% | 2.30% | 10.60% | 0.10% |
| Tuesday | 21.80% | 2.40% | 10.80% | 0.10% |
| Wednesday | 21.80% | 2.30% | 10.70% | 0.10% |
| Thursday | 21.70% | 2.30% | 10.70% | 0.10% |
| Friday | 21.60% | 2.20% | 10.10% | 0.10% |
| Saturday | 20.50% | 2.10% | 10.10% | 0.10% |
Average Email Opening Rates According To Region
| Region | Open Rate | Click-Through Rate | Click-to-Open Rate | Unsubscribe Rate |
| AMER | 21.00% | 2.20% | 10.40% | 0.10% |
| UK | 22.90% | 2.40% | 10.60% | 0.10% |
| EU | 22.10% | 2.20% | 10.70% | 0.20% |
| APAC | 22.40% | 3.00% | 13.40% | 0.30% |
Average Email Opening Rates According To Industry
- All Industries—Overall Average: 21.97%
- Hotel, inn, B&B, campgrounds): 17.29%
- Accountant/ CA: 16.94%
- Animal Based Services: 21.23%
- Art, Culture, Entertainment: 17.79%
- Automotive Services/ Cars: 9.72%
- Child Care Services: 22.99%
- Civic/Social Membership (e.g., associations, chambers, clubs): 12.63%
- Consultant, Training (e.g., marketing, management): 11.38%
- Education – Primary/Secondary: 28.44%
- Education – Higher Education: 19.55%
- Financial Advisor: 12.26%
- Fitness Center, Sports, Recreation: 17.48%
- Fitness/Nutritional Services (e.g., personal trainer, football coach, athlete training, wellness coach): 12.73%
- Government Agency or Services(e.g., government railway system for bookings, road traffic assistance): 28.22%
- Health & Social Services (e.g., hospital, elder care, adoption services, baby care, Kids Creche): 21.84%
- Health Professional (e.g., physician, dentist, chiropractor, orthopedic, surgeon): 16.60%
- Home & Building Services (e.g., construction, HVAC, interior designer, architect, landscaping, design): 19.59%
- Insurance(e.g., car insurance, life insurance, bike insurance): 16.69%
- Legal Services(e.g., law firm, personal lawyer, criminal lawyer): 17.80%
- Manufacturing and Distribution: 14.29%
- Marketing, Advertising, Public Relations (e.g., online marketing companies, online-eCommerce): 12.40%
- Other: 12.13%
- Nonprofit: 21.62%
- Personal Services (e.g., dry cleaning, photography, housekeeping): 16.70%
- Professional Services: 14.30%
- Publishing: 15.51%
- Real Estate: 13.42%
- Religious Organization: 29.42%
- Restaurant, Bar, Cafe, Caterer: 14.71%
- Retail (e.g., brick and mortar, online): 11.04%
- Salon, Spa, Barber (e.g., nails, tanning): 14.26%
- Technology (e.g., web developer): 12.44%
- Transportation: 13.97%
- Travel and Tourism (e.g., limo driver, tour guide, reservations): 15.02%
Wrapping Up
These are some examples of average email open rates by industry and business type. Don’t feel discouraged if your email opens are lower; keep practicing writing attention-grabbing subject lines and making your content more relevant to the customer’s interests.
To get good results from email marketing, you need to maintain the average opening rate of your emails. Anything above these opening rates is welcome. Please let us know your thoughts on how to increase email opening rates and what techniques you are using to do so. Comment below and let other readers know what you think. Have fun learning!
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Simran works as a technical writer. The graduate in MS Computer Science from the well known CS hub, aka Silicon Valley, is also an editor of the website. She enjoys writing about any tech topic, including programming, algorithms, cloud, data science, and AI. Traveling, sketching, and gardening are the hobbies that interest her.
