Emails have become an important part of business communication. They are the best way to reach out to customers without being intrusive. If you think just conducting email campaigns is enough then you are wrong. You should see how your customers respond to them and make improvements accordingly. Have you seen your email marketing campaigns report? You must have observed your email’s open rate and click through rate. But do you know what is average email open rate for your industry? What you can consider a good average email open rate? 

Here, in this blog, we will answer all your questions related to email marketing and email open rate average. Keep reading the blog as we will also tell you the best strategies to improve your average email open rate and click-through rate average. 

What is open rate?

Open rate email is the percentage of subscribers who have opened your email out of the total number of subscribers to whom you have sent the email. By tracking your open rate you can know what your customers like and how effective your emails are. You can find out the topics and content that drive maximum people’s attention. This way you can strategize your future email campaigns more effectively.

How to calculate open rate?

You can calculate your open rate email by simply dividing the number of subscribers who have opened your email by the total number of people whom you have sent the email. Then, multiply this number by 100 to get the email open rate for your campaign. 

The average email open rate is an important metric to measure your email marketing campaign’s performance. However, it is not the only metric you should consider for your email marketing campaigns. 

What is a good open rate for email?

A good open rate for email is between 17-28% depending on the industry you’re in. However, remember that the average email open rate differs across various industries. In the next section, we will compare the average email open rate in different industries. 

Email marketing statistics: Email opening rates by industry 

As per the Email Marketing Benchmarks Report 2022, the average email open rate was 21.5% across different industries in 2021. It has increased by 3.5% compared to the average email open rate of 2020. 

The Education, Agriculture, and Financial Services have the highest average email open rate between 25-28%. Have a look at the table to know the average email open rate across different industries. 

How to improve email open rates?

The average email open rate can tell you about the effectiveness of your email marketing strategy. It shows the number of people who have opened the emails out of the total number of emails you have sent. A high average email open rate suggests that your subject lines are compelling enough to make people open them. 

A low email marketing open rate can tell you a lot about your email strategy. It shows that your subject lines are not interesting enough to entice people to open them. Sometimes if you send out too many emails frequently, then chances are people might end up opening just a few of them. However, there are many ways through which you can improve your average email open rate that we have given below. 

Test your email subject line 

To increase your average email open rate, you should focus on the email subject line. Try to understand what intrigues the interest of your subscribers. A good subject line clearly defines what’s there in your email. To find out the most effective subject line for your email campaigns, you can use A/B testing. 

You can set up an A/B campaign for two variants of your email subject line. See which subject line is getting a better response from the two groups within your subscribers. You can use the best-performing subject line for the rest of your subscribers. By doing A/B testing you can make sure that you’re delivering relevant content to your audience. 

Tips for creating the best subject lines for your email marketing strategy

Creating a good subject line can be a difficult task especially if you’re starting with your email marketing. In this section, we will give you tips to create the best subject lines for your email campaigns. 

1. Personalize your subject lines 

Personalized emails can help you get people’s attention faster. By personalizing your emails you can increase your average email open rate. You can personalize your subject lines with merge tags for the recipient’s name or location. You can send personalized emails with marketing automation for transactional emails like birthdays, promotions, and post-purchases. 

2. Be direct and descriptive 

Try to be direct and descriptive in your subject lines instead of just keeping them trendy. Don’t go for seasonal sayings like, “hot summer sales” which are popular but not a good hook. You can communicate the benefits of your products or bring the attention of people to some specific deal. 

3. Keep it short and sweet 

Don’t confuse people with long and intricate subject lines. Most of the people read emails from their mobiles. Therefore, you should try to keep your emails short & sweet so that they can read them easily. Most email marketers recommend not using more than 9 words or 60 characters in a subject line. 

4. Don’t use too much punctuation 

According to marketing experts, you should not use more than 3 punctuation marks per subject line. Using too many punctuation marks can make your email land in the spam list. Also, try to avoid using special characters in your emails. 

5. Limit the use of emojis 

As per email marketing research, you should use at most one emoji at a time. While using emojis make sure you use them as supplement words not as replacement words. Make sure that your main message is communicated well. You must be aware that the different operating systems have different versions of emojis. Thus, it’s important you test your emails before sending them to your subscribers. 

Audience segmentation tips for good email open rate average 

To increase your average email open rate, you should try to understand who your subscribers are and what information might be relevant to them. If you send too many emails with irrelevant content then people will stop opening your emails or even unsubscribe. Try to know the location, interests, or recent activity to segment your audience and send them tailored content accordingly. 

By doing audience segmentation for your email campaigns, you can send the right content to the right people. You can do audience segmentation based on different factors depending on the type of your industry. This will not only help to increase your average email open rate but the conversion rate as well. 

How to do audience segmentation for increasing the average email open rate? 

For boosting your average email open rate, you must do audience segmentation. In this section, we will give you the best tips for doing audience segmentation for your email campaigns. 

Keep your segments widely defined 

Audience segmentation can help you target your audience specifically. You should create small groups of your target audience to find out their specific needs. This way you can deliver content that resonates with them. However, make sure that you don’t create too many segments that they have just a few numbers of people. This way you’ll need to write too many marketing messages for different audiences which is a problem. 

Try to create widely defined audience segments so that you can target them effectively. This way you’ll not need to spend too much time but your messages will still be specific to your different customer segments. 

Set goals and measure them 

Setting goals for your marketing strategy is important to measure success. For example, your goal is to expand your reach. Then, you should aim at increasing the subscribers’ list. You can set your goals like you want to increase your product sales by 20%. Make sure that you set goals for your email marketing campaigns that align with your overall company goals. 

Once you have set goals, track your email marketing performance to measure your progress. If you aren’t able to achieve your goals then you can alter your email strategy accordingly. Make adjustments according to the data you receive from different email marketing campaign data. 

What is click-through rate (CTR)? 

Till now, we discussed about average email open rate but what is the click through rate? Click-through rate or email click rate is the number of people who clicked on the hyperlink, call-to-action (CTA), or image within your email content. 

The click-through rate can help you measure the engagement of your email campaign. With click-through rate, you can measure different aspects of your email such as: 

From CTR, you can know the percentage of subscribers who clicked on your emails. It shows the interest of people in your content. You can know the possibility of them becoming your paying customers or repeat customers. 

How to calculate click through rates?

Like the average email open rate, calculating the click through rate is easy. You can calculate it by taking the total number of clicks an email receives and dividing it by the total number of delivered emails. 

What is a good click-through rate for email?

A good email open rate is between 2-5%, depending on the industry type. The click through rate for email depends on various factors. In the next section, we will check out the average click through rate across different industries. 

What is the average email click through rate by industry?

As per email marketing stats, the average email open rate was 2.3% across all different industries. This is less by 0.3% compared to the average email open rate from 2020. The industries with the highest click-through rates are Education, Agriculture, and Real Estate with average click-through rates between 3-5%. 

Now, let us have a look at the average click through rate across various industries. 

How to improve click through rate average? 

The click through rate is an indicator of how many people find your content useful. To increase your average email open rate, you should try to curate content that is useful to your subscribers. You can also try audience segmentation to increase your average email open rate. Below, we have given some tips to increase your click through rate average. 

Make your CTA text compelling 

Avoid using generic phrases like “click here” or “link here” for your click-through text. Some people won’t simply click it because it’s unclear and confusing where it will go. Try to make your CTA text interesting and descriptive. Provide your link only after giving the relevant information to people. For example, you have given information to people about a specific service. Then, you can redirect the link to the service’s webpage instead of your homepage. 

Embed more than one link

When it comes to embedding links, there are no specific rules. You can include multiple links to the same content in a campaign.  This is successful for the campaigns with a single call to action like asking people to buy the abandoned cart product. 

You can put buy now buttons at several places within the email content. Instead of just one buy now button, you can add two or three, this will increase the chances of someone clicking.

No matter even if your links are redirected to the same webpage, you should still test your links. 

A/B testing your email content

A/B testing can help you test your email campaigns for content. You can create different versions of your content for a single campaign. Send both versions to two small different groups within your subscribers. Evaluate how each of the email content performed. You can send out the email to all your subscribers that get the highest click-through rate. 

Make sure that you always analyze your email marketing campaign report. See in which content most of the people are interested. You can also sort your subscribers based on how they respond to your emails. Testing and reviewing campaigns is an important part of email marketing strategy. 

What is click to open rate (CTOR)? 

The click-to-open rate is used to measure the effectiveness of your email content. CTOR is basically the number of unique opens in your email campaign. It shows how interesting your content is for your subscribers. If they like your email layout, copy, images, and overall content, then they’ll click through to learn more. 

How to calculate click to open rate? 

Click-to-open rate is calculated by dividing the number of unique clicks by the number of unique opens. Like the average email open rate, the click-to-open rate depends on several factors like how good is your email content. 

For the best understanding of your CTOR, you can create your own benchmark email marketing. The CTOR depends on various factors like industry, list size, etc. Therefore you can’t compare your CTOR with the average numbers.

What is a good click to open rate for email?

A good CTOR is between 6-17%, depending on the industry type. To get an idea of the average email open rate for your industry, you can look at the table given below. 

Email marketing statistics: Average click to open rate (CTOR) by industry 

As per the statistics, the average click-to-open rate was 10.5% in the year 2021 across different industries. This is lower by 3.6% from the average click-to-open rate of the year 2020. The industries with the highest CTORs are Real Estate, Education, Government & Politics with an average between 14-17%. 

Best tips for improving your email marketing statistics 

You can improve your email marketing statistics by making strategic changes. Below, we have given some of the best tips to improve your email marketing statistics. 

By implementing these tips you can ensure that your average email open rate improves. 

Average email open rate: The conclusion

To improve your email marketing strategy, you need to work on your basics like subject lines and content. In the above blog, we have given the average email open rate across different industries for your idea. You can implement the various tactics that we have given to boost your average email open rate. 

Webmaxy eGrowth is an email marketing tool that can help you schedule and automate your email campaigns. This eCommerce management platform comes with a wide range of features such as a KPI dashboard, conversion dashboard, marketing automation, audience segmentation, social campaigns, Whatsapp marketing, customer loyalty, help desk, and retargeting. 

To learn more about Webmaxy eGrowth, schedule a call with our experts or email us at info@webmaxy.co.  

Average email open rate FAQs

What is the average open rate for email marketing?

The average email open rate for email marketing across different industries is 2.3%. The average email open rate for different industries depends on various factors like content and the activeness of the target audience.  The industries with the highest average email open rate are Education, Agriculture, and Real Estate.

What is a good email open rate?

A good email open rate is between 17-28%. However, the email open rate depends on various factors like industry type, content relevance, email list accuracy, etc. You can have a look at the average email open rate in your specific industry to know what is a good email open rate for your campaigns.

What is an average open rate for email campaigns?

According to Email Marketing Benchmarks Report 2022, the average email open rate was 21.5% across all different industries in 2021. Most of the people tend to open emails if they like the subject line and content is relevant to them.

What is the average email open rate?

The email marketing average open rates across all industries is 21.5%. The average email open rate depends on different factors like the industry type, subject line, content relevance, etc. If you’re just starting with your email marketing then you can have a look at the average email open rate of your specific industry to compare your metrics.

Is a 30% email open rate good?

A 30% email open rate is a top-tier score for email marketing as most of the people have an average of 10-15% per campaign. You can increase your average email open rate by crafting effective subject lines and curating relevant content. Make sure you don’t include too many exclamations and special characters in your subject line as it might lead your emails to the spam box.