What is a good email open rate in 2026?

Across most industries, a **26%–34% open rate** is considered average in 2026. Anything above 35% is typically strong performance. However, due to privacy changes like Apple Mail Privacy Protection, open rates should be used directionally rather than as an absolute indicator of success.

What is the average email click-through rate (CTR)?

The average email CTR across industries ranges from **2% to 4.5%**. SaaS and media brands often see slightly higher CTRs, while ecommerce brands may trend lower due to higher send frequency.

What is a good email conversion rate?

Email conversion rates typically range between **0.8% and 4%**, depending on industry and offer quality. Automated flows like welcome sequences and abandoned cart emails often outperform these averages significantly.

Do email benchmarks vary by list size?

Yes. Smaller lists (under 10,000 subscribers) typically see higher engagement rates. Larger lists may experience slightly lower open and click rates, but even small percentage improvements can generate significant revenue at scale.

Which email metric matters most?

While open rate and CTR are useful engagement indicators, **conversion rate and revenue per subscriber** ultimately matter most. These metrics directly reflect business impact and profitability.

Email Marketing Benchmarks for 2026 (By Industry & List Size)

Email marketing benchmarks are one of the most searched topics every year — and for good reason. Performance metrics only make sense when you have context to evaluate them against.

Imagine you just sent a campaign and the results come in: 29% open rate, 3.2% click-through rate, and 1.1% conversion rate. At first glance, these numbers might seem solid. But without industry benchmarks to compare against, you're essentially navigating in the dark. Are these results strong enough to celebrate? Do they signal areas for improvement? Or are they average for your industry?

This uncertainty is why email marketers constantly search for reliable benchmark data. Understanding where your performance stands relative to industry standards helps you identify opportunities, justify budget decisions, and set realistic goals for optimization.

In this comprehensive guide, we've compiled updated email marketing benchmarks for 2026 based on industry analysis and list size variations. You'll discover average open rates across different sectors, click-through rate benchmarks that matter, click-to-open rate standards, conversion rate averages by industry, how your list size influences performance, and most importantly, how to properly interpret these benchmarks to drive meaningful improvements in your email program.

Average Email Open Rates in 2026

Open rate has long been considered the primary health indicator for email campaigns, though its reliability has evolved considerably with recent privacy updates. Apple Mail Privacy Protection and similar features from other email clients have made open rate tracking less precise than it once was. However, this metric still provides valuable directional insight into how well your subject lines perform and whether your audience finds your emails relevant enough to open.

Overall Average Open Rate (All Industries)

Across all industries in 2026, email marketers can expect to see open rates ranging between 26% and 34%. This range represents typical performance for well-maintained lists with engaged subscribers.

If your open rates consistently land above 35%, you're outperforming most of your competitors and demonstrating strong audience engagement. This usually indicates compelling subject lines, good sender reputation, and a subscriber base that genuinely wants to hear from you.

On the other hand, if you're seeing open rates between 20% and 25%, there's room for optimization. This might mean testing different subject line approaches, reviewing your send timing, or re-evaluating your segmentation strategy.

Open rates below 20% typically signal more serious issues that need immediate attention. This could point to deliverability problems, list quality issues, or a fundamental disconnect between what your subscribers expect and what you're sending them. At this level, it's worth conducting a comprehensive audit of your email program.

While open rates shouldn't be your only success metric, they remain a useful diagnostic tool for identifying trends and testing hypotheses about subject line effectiveness.

Email Open Rate Benchmarks by Industry

Not all industries perform the same when it comes to email engagement. The type of content you send, your audience's expectations, and the frequency of your emails all play significant roles in determining what "good" looks like for your specific sector.

Industry	Average Open Rate
SaaS / B2B	28% – 36%
Ecommerce	22% – 30%
Finance	24% – 32%
Media / Publishing	30% – 40%
Healthcare	25% – 33%
Education	28% – 38%

Content-driven industries like media, publishing, and education consistently achieve higher open rates because their audiences have developed habitual reading behaviors. Subscribers to newsletters and educational content often look forward to receiving emails and actively seek them out in their inboxes. This creates a naturally higher engagement baseline.

Ecommerce brands, meanwhile, typically see lower open rates despite sending valuable content. The primary reason is frequency. Most ecommerce companies send promotional emails multiple times per week, which can lead to inbox fatigue even among interested customers. Additionally, many promotional emails are scanned quickly or saved for later rather than opened immediately, which affects how they're tracked.

B2B and SaaS companies fall somewhere in the middle, with performance heavily dependent on the quality of their list acquisition strategy and the relevance of their content. Decision-makers receive hundreds of emails daily, so standing out requires exceptionally targeted messaging and timing.

Email Click-Through Rate (CTR) Benchmarks for 2026

Click-through rate is arguably a more reliable indicator of email performance than open rate because it measures actual engagement rather than just inbox visibility. CTR represents the percentage of delivered emails that received at least one click, making it a direct measure of how compelling your content and calls-to-action are.

Overall Average CTR

Across all industries, the average email click-through rate ranges from 2.0% to 4.5%. This metric is particularly valuable because it's less affected by privacy updates and provides clear insight into whether your email content motivates action.

When your CTR consistently exceeds 5%, you're delivering highly engaging content that resonates strongly with your audience. This level of performance suggests that your messaging, design, and calls-to-action are well-aligned with subscriber expectations and needs.

A CTR between 3% and 4% indicates healthy performance. You're meeting baseline engagement expectations and maintaining subscriber interest, though there may still be opportunities to optimize specific elements like CTA placement, link prominence, or content relevance.

If your click-through rates fall below 2%, it's time to examine your content strategy more carefully. Low CTRs despite decent open rates often signal a disconnect between what your subject line promises and what your email delivers. It might also indicate that your content isn't providing enough value, your CTAs aren't clear or compelling, or your targeting needs refinement.

Many email marketers find that CTR provides better optimization insights than open rate because it directly correlates with conversion potential and revenue generation. After all, subscribers need to click before they can convert.

CTR by Industry

Just like open rates, click-through rates vary significantly across different industries based on audience behavior, content type, and email frequency.

Industry	Average CTR
SaaS / B2B	3.0% – 5.0%
Ecommerce	1.8% – 3.5%
Finance	2.5% – 4.0%
Media	3.5% – 6.0%
Healthcare	2.0% – 3.5%
Education	3.0% – 5.5%

Media and publishing companies often achieve the highest click-through rates because their primary goal is driving readership. When someone subscribes to a news outlet or content publication, they're explicitly opting in to receive links to articles and content pieces. The entire value proposition is built around clicking through to consume content.

SaaS and B2B companies perform well when they focus on targeted, educational content that addresses specific pain points. Their higher CTRs reflect audiences that are actively seeking solutions and information relevant to their professional challenges.

Ecommerce click-through rates tend to be lower relative to other industries, but this doesn't necessarily indicate poor performance. Ecommerce emails often serve multiple purposes—some recipients browse without clicking, some click multiple times across several emails before purchasing, and others save promotional emails for later reference. The real measure of success for ecommerce isn't just CTR but the combination of clicks and eventual conversion rates.

Understanding these industry-specific patterns helps you set realistic expectations and identify whether your CTR issues are universal or specific to your approach.

Click-To-Open Rate (CTOR) Benchmarks

Click-to-open rate is one of the most underutilized metrics in email marketing, yet it provides incredibly valuable insights into content effectiveness. CTOR measures what percentage of email openers actually clicked on something, effectively removing the variable of subject line performance from the equation.

Average CTOR (All Industries)

The typical click-to-open rate across industries falls between 10% and 18%. This metric tells you how well your email content performs once someone has already decided to open it.

Think of CTOR as a quality check on your email body content. If your open rates are solid but your CTOR consistently falls below 8%, you have a content problem. Your subject lines are doing their job by enticing opens, but once people see what's inside, they're not motivated to take action. This often indicates issues with your email's value proposition, call-to-action clarity, design layout, or overall relevance.

A strong CTOR above 15% suggests that your emails deliver on the promise made in the subject line. Recipients who open your emails find the content valuable enough to engage further, which is precisely what you want.

CTOR is particularly useful for A/B testing because it isolates content performance from subject line performance. When you test two different email designs or messaging approaches, CTOR tells you which version more effectively converted interested readers into engaged clickers, regardless of how many people opened each version initially.

Email Conversion Rate Benchmarks

Conversion rate is where email marketing theory meets business reality. While opens and clicks indicate engagement, conversion rate directly measures whether your emails drive the actions that matter to your bottom line—whether that's purchases, sign-ups, downloads, or registrations.

Email conversion rate represents the percentage of recipients who complete your desired action after clicking through from an email. This metric varies significantly by industry, offer type, and campaign purpose.

Industry	Average Conversion Rate
SaaS	1.5% – 3.5%
Ecommerce	0.8% – 2.5%
Finance	2.0% – 4.0%
Media	1.0% – 2.0%
Education	1.5% – 3.0%

Financial services often achieve higher conversion rates because they typically target qualified prospects with specific needs. When someone clicks through a financial services email about refinancing or investment opportunities, they're usually already in a consideration mindset.

SaaS conversion rates benefit from longer sales cycles and more considered purchases. While individual campaign conversion rates might seem modest, the cumulative effect of nurture sequences often drives significant trial sign-ups and demo requests.

Ecommerce conversion rates can appear lower in aggregate, but this masks important nuances. Broadcast promotional emails might convert at 1%, while automated abandoned cart sequences frequently exceed 5% conversion rates. Welcome series emails often outperform as well, sometimes achieving conversion rates between 3% and 6% as they capitalize on the subscriber's initial enthusiasm.

It's worth noting that these benchmarks apply to broadcast campaigns. Automated email sequences—including welcome flows, abandoned cart emails, browse abandonment, and post-purchase series—typically perform significantly better because they're triggered by specific user behaviors and sent at optimal moments in the customer journey.

How List Size Impacts Email Benchmarks

One of the most overlooked factors in benchmark analysis is list size. The performance patterns you see with 5,000 subscribers often look quite different from what you'll experience with 500,000 subscribers, even within the same industry.

Small Lists (Under 10,000 Subscribers)

Smaller email lists frequently outperform industry benchmarks across most engagement metrics. These lists benefit from several natural advantages that become harder to maintain at scale.

First, smaller lists typically have more recent subscribers. When your list is still growing, a higher percentage of your total audience consists of people who joined recently and remain genuinely interested in your content. This recency effect drives higher open and click rates.

Second, smaller lists are easier to keep clean. You can more readily identify and remove inactive subscribers, bounce issues are easier to address quickly, and list hygiene practices have a more immediate impact on overall performance.

Third, personal relationships matter more. With a smaller audience, you can often maintain a more intimate tone, reference specific community events or conversations, and create content that feels tailored rather than mass-produced.

If you're managing a small list, it's reasonable to expect open rates 3-5 percentage points above industry averages and click rates that exceed benchmarks by 1-2 percentage points. Use this advantage to build strong engagement habits and loyalty that will serve you well as your list grows.

Mid-Size Lists (10,000–100,000)

Once you reach this range, your performance typically stabilizes around industry averages. You're large enough that individual subscriber behaviors have less impact on overall metrics, but not so large that deliverability becomes exceptionally complex.

This is the stage where segmentation becomes critical. You can no longer treat your entire list as a monolithic audience and expect strong results. The subscribers who joined two years ago have different interests than those who signed up last month. Your most active customers need different messaging than occasional browsers.

Successful mid-size email programs invest heavily in segmentation strategies based on engagement history, purchase behavior, preferences, and lifecycle stage. The lists that continue exceeding benchmarks at this size are almost always well-segmented and targeted.

Large Lists (100,000+)

Large email lists present unique challenges and opportunities. Your aggregate metrics might trend slightly below industry averages—perhaps 2-3 percentage points lower for open rate and 0.5-1 percentage point lower for CTR. This is normal and expected.

The tradeoff is scale. While a 2.8% click-through rate might be slightly below your industry's 3.2% benchmark, that "lower" performance on a list of 200,000 subscribers generates 5,600 clicks per campaign. A competitor with a 4% CTR on a 50,000-person list only gets 2,000 clicks despite better engagement percentages.

Large lists also face heightened deliverability scrutiny. ISPs monitor engagement signals more carefully for high-volume senders, and even small missteps can affect inbox placement across your entire list.

The key insight for large list managers is that small percentage improvements create massive revenue impacts. Improving CTR from 2.8% to 3.1% adds 600 additional clicks per campaign. If those clicks convert at even 1.5%, that's nine additional conversions per send. Multiply that across dozens of campaigns per month, and optimization efforts quickly justify themselves.

Why Benchmarks Can Be Misleading

Benchmarks provide valuable context, but they can also mislead if you treat them as absolute targets rather than directional guides. Industry averages aggregate data from thousands of senders with wildly different strategies, list quality, and execution capabilities.

Consider what benchmarks don't account for. Your email frequency makes an enormous difference—a brand sending daily emails will naturally see different engagement patterns than one sending weekly. The method you use to acquire subscribers matters tremendously; purchased lists perform drastically differently than organic opt-ins. Brand strength plays a major role; established brands with loyal customers enjoy engagement advantages that newer companies must work harder to achieve.

Offer quality varies significantly even within the same industry. An ecommerce brand offering genuine value in their emails will outperform one that only sends promotional blasts. Seasonality affects different businesses in different ways; a tax preparation company's metrics in March look nothing like their metrics in July.

Perhaps most importantly, benchmarks can't tell you whether your performance is good enough to achieve your specific business goals. A 2.5% conversion rate might be above average for your industry, but if your business model requires 3.5% to be profitable, the benchmark doesn't matter—you still have work to do.

The most successful email marketers use benchmarks as a starting point for understanding their position, not as a ceiling to reach. They recognize that the real question isn't "Are we average?" but rather "Are we improving, and is our email program driving profitable growth?"

How to Properly Compare Your Metrics

Smart email marketers ask different questions than those simply chasing industry averages. Instead of fixating on whether your metrics exceed benchmarks, focus on questions that drive actual business improvement.

Is your open rate improving month-over-month? Consistent upward trends indicate that your subject line testing, segmentation improvements, and list hygiene efforts are working. Even if you're still below industry average, sustained improvement suggests you're on the right path.

Is your click-through rate trending upward? Growing CTR demonstrates that your content resonates more effectively over time. This often results from better understanding your audience's preferences, improving your email design, or refining your call-to-action strategies.

Is your conversion rate stable or increasing? Conversion rate stability is valuable even when other metrics fluctuate. It indicates that while your reach or engagement might vary, the quality of traffic you send to your website or landing pages remains consistent. Increasing conversion rates suggest improving offer-market fit.

Is revenue per subscriber growing? This might be the most important metric of all. You can achieve this through higher conversion rates, increased average order values, or more frequent purchases. Revenue per subscriber directly translates to business impact in a way that engagement metrics alone cannot.

Are you identifying and leveraging your highest-performing segments? Look beyond aggregate numbers to find your top-performing subscriber segments. Perhaps your six-month-old subscribers convert better than brand new ones. Maybe subscribers from certain acquisition sources consistently outperform others. These insights matter more than overall benchmarks.

The shift from benchmark comparison to trend analysis fundamentally changes how you approach email marketing. You stop asking "Are we good enough?" and start asking "Are we getting better?"

Small percentage improvements compound dramatically at scale. Consider a brand with 100,000 subscribers sending four campaigns monthly. Improving CTR from 3.0% to 3.3% adds 120 additional clicks per campaign—480 additional clicks per month. If those clicks convert at just 2%, that's nearly 10 additional conversions monthly from a seemingly modest improvement.

Using dedicated analytics tools makes these comparisons significantly easier. Rather than manually tracking metrics across platforms or building complex spreadsheets, modern email calculators let you input your campaign data and instantly see how performance trends over time, how you compare to benchmarks, and what revenue impact your metric changes create.

Final Thoughts

Email marketing benchmarks serve an important purpose: they help you understand where you stand relative to your industry and identify potential areas for improvement. But the true path to email marketing success doesn't come from matching industry averages—it comes from systematically improving your own baseline performance.

Focus your energy on increasing engagement through better segmentation, more relevant content, and smarter targeting. Work relentlessly on optimizing your conversion paths, from the first click to the final purchase. Most importantly, track the metrics that actually matter for your business, particularly revenue per subscriber and overall program profitability.

Here's a perspective that changes everything: the difference between a 2.8% click-through rate and a 3.4% CTR might seem small when you look at the percentages. On a large email list, however, this gap represents thousands of additional clicks, potentially hundreds of additional conversions, and tens of thousands of dollars in additional revenue over the course of a year.

That's why measurement matters. That's why optimization matters. And that's why you should care more about your trend lines than your industry's benchmark lines.

The brands that win with email marketing aren't the ones obsessing over whether they're slightly above or below average. They're the ones measuring carefully, optimizing intentionally based on their own data, and scaling confidently as they prove what works for their specific audience and business model.

Benchmarks give you a starting point. Your data shows you the path forward. Trust your metrics, test continuously, and let improvement compound over time.

Track your email benchmarks accurately and compare your performance instantly using Email Calculator.