“Say, what’s the average number of opens and clicks I should see on email?” – said every client we ever consulted over the last 10 years. Marketing agencies and consultants reading this post are chuckling to themselves right now because they’ve undoubtedly heard this question from almost every client for whom they’ve ever built an email campaign.
If you’ve asked that question yourself and have had a consultant immediately fire back with a figure, well, that figure was likely inaccurate. Our answer was always, “it depends.” It depends on industry, company size and list age and origin and so much more. There is no standard open rate. There is no standard click-thru rate. There is no standard bounce rate. There is no standard opt-out rate, etc. Or is there?
While there are many factors to consider, and most of us don’t work with enough companies to pull these numbers and accurately supply averages, is there a way to know what a company your size in your industry should be performing at? Actually, there is!
Enter MailChimp
Thanks to our friends over at MailChimp (who send billions of emails/month), we have detailed information on 46 unique industries. Hundreds of millions of emails were tracked during the study.
Here are the stats as of August 2015, as seen on the MailChimp website:
| Industry | Open | Click | Soft | Hard | Abuse | Unsub |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agriculture and Food Services | 25.63% | 3.39% | 0.67% | 0.51% | 0.03% | 0.28% |
| Architecture and Construction | 24.97% | 3.09% | 1.64% | 1.17% | 0.04% | 0.36% |
| Arts and Artists | 27.86% | 2.98% | 0.76% | 0.55% | 0.03% | 0.27% |
| Beauty and Personal Care | 19.41% | 2.25% | 0.51% | 0.49% | 0.05% | 0.33% |
| Business and Finance | 21.64% | 2.90% | 0.78% | 0.63% | 0.03% | 0.24% |
| Computers and Electronics | 21.55% | 2.55% | 1.11% | 0.78% | 0.03% | 0.30% |
| Construction | 22.41% | 2.05% | 1.70% | 1.32% | 0.06% | 0.44% |
| Consulting | 19.96% | 2.57% | 1.04% | 0.78% | 0.03% | 0.29% |
| Creative Services/Agency | 23.01% | 2.95% | 1.19% | 0.93% | 0.04% | 0.35% |
| Daily Deals/E-Coupons | 13.69% | 1.89% | 0.13% | 0.09% | 0.01% | 0.09% |
| eCommerce | 16.87% | 2.60% | 0.34% | 0.27% | 0.03% | 0.21% |
| Education and Training | 22.44% | 2.94% | 0.63% | 0.54% | 0.03% | 0.20% |
| Entertainment and Events | 21.48% | 2.42% | 0.56% | 0.46% | 0.03% | 0.26% |
| Gambling | 17.35% | 2.92% | 0.44% | 0.48% | 0.04% | 0.16% |
| Games | 22.08% | 3.38% | 0.55% | 0.60% | 0.04% | 0.23% |
| Government | 26.77% | 3.67% | 0.57% | 0.47% | 0.02% | 0.13% |
| Health and Fitness | 23.23% | 3.06% | 0.52% | 0.51% | 0.04% | 0.37% |
| Hobbies | 29.35% | 5.65% | 0.39% | 0.31% | 0.03% | 0.23% |
| Home and Garden | 25.61% | 4.04% | 0.71% | 0.49% | 0.05% | 0.37% |
| Insurance | 19.90% | 2.11% | 0.75% | 0.79% | 0.04% | 0.22% |
| Legal | 22.30% | 2.90% | 0.79% | 0.66% | 0.03% | 0.21% |
| Manufacturing | 23.25% | 2.64% | 1.56% | 1.06% | 0.04% | 0.36% |
| Marketing and Advertising | 18.50% | 2.15% | 0.88% | 0.70% | 0.03% | 0.28% |
| Media and Publishing | 22.60% | 4.69% | 0.33% | 0.21% | 0.01% | 0.12% |
| Medical, Dental, and Healthcare | 22.87% | 2.67% | 0.82% | 0.81% | 0.05% | 0.29% |
| Mobile | 21.28% | 2.48% | 0.76% | 0.73% | 0.04% | 0.39% |
| Music and Musicians | 23.02% | 2.91% | 0.68% | 0.52% | 0.03% | 0.29% |
| Non-Profit | 25.58% | 2.94% | 0.55% | 0.46% | 0.02% | 0.19% |
| Other | 23.45% | 3.08% | 0.88% | 0.69% | 0.04% | 0.28% |
| Pharmaceuticals | 19.67% | 2.68% | 0.82% | 0.71% | 0.03% | 0.22% |
| Photo and Video | 26.49% | 3.84% | 0.81% | 0.69% | 0.04% | 0.40% |
| Politics | 22.79% | 2.23% | 0.50% | 0.46% | 0.04% | 0.21% |
| Professional Services | 21.11% | 2.73% | 1.00% | 0.77% | 0.03% | 0.31% |
| Public Relations | 20.32% | 1.81% | 0.87% | 0.67% | 0.02% | 0.24% |
| Real Estate | 22.03% | 2.20% | 0.76% | 0.64% | 0.05% | 0.33% |
| Recruitment and Staffing | 20.57% | 2.53% | 0.64% | 0.64% | 0.03% | 0.31% |
| Religion | 26.52% | 3.28% | 0.22% | 0.21% | 0.02% | 0.12% |
| Restaurant | 23.54% | 1.48% | 0.37% | 0.29% | 0.03% | 0.30% |
| Restaurant and Venue | 22.59% | 1.46% | 0.65% | 0.55% | 0.04% | 0.39% |
| Retail | 22.06% | 2.82% | 0.44% | 0.37% | 0.03% | 0.28% |
| Social Networks and Online Communities | 22.14% | 3.73% | 0.44% | 0.37% | 0.03% | 0.23% |
| Software and Web App | 22.03% | 2.61% | 1.11% | 0.89% | 0.03% | 0.39% |
| Sports | 26.13% | 3.61% | 0.58% | 0.50% | 0.03% | 0.27% |
| Telecommunications | 20.76% | 2.31% | 1.19% | 0.94% | 0.03% | 0.27% |
| Travel and Transportation | 20.80% | 2.43% | 0.74% | 0.53% | 0.03% | 0.24% |
| Vitamin Supplements | 17.02% | 2.06% | 0.42% | 0.36% | 0.05% | 0.27% |
* Table Headings: Soft = Soft Bounce, Hard = Hard Bounce, Abuse = ISP Spam Complaint, Unsub = Unsubscribed
One Word of Caution
While this information was pulled from hundreds of millions of emails, not just hundreds and not even just millions…while it represents every size of business from one-person startups to Fortune 500 companies…while the numbers are probably quite accurate, these averages are only spot-on for companies using MailChimp. Every ESP (email service provider) has their own unique, slight variance on the methodology for measuring email stats (especially the delivered metric which is not shown in the table above – but delivery certainly has a trickle down effect on the rest of your numbers). So if you’re an Keap user or send email using any other service, take that into consideration.
Inside Keap
So how do you pull these numbers inside Keap? It’s actually quite easy. This morning I recorded a brief screen capture video on how to do that.
Okay, that covers broadcast emails. How do you do that for Campaign Builder emails? It’s actually quite difficult. There’s exporting, spreadsheet non-sense and a bunch of tedious work involved. It’s a painful process we’re prepared to solve…
Email Marketing Announcement
It’s no secret that one of the most popular requests we receive from our users, not only on our online voting platform but also on the phone, live chat and through support tickets – is email reporting for Keap campaigns.
We’re working hard on this and expect to be able to release new report templates around campaign email stats in about 3 weeks time. We can’t wait to share this with the Keap community. You’ll also be hearing from us this coming week about a handful of new CRM report templates we’re wrapping up.
Enjoy your weekend and until next time…Happy Charting!
Team Graphly