Email Marketing Benchmarks

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“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:

IndustryOpenClickSoftHardAbuseUnsub
Agriculture and Food Services25.63%3.39%0.67%0.51%0.03%0.28%
Architecture and Construction24.97%3.09%1.64%1.17%0.04%0.36%
Arts and Artists27.86%2.98%0.76%0.55%0.03%0.27%
Beauty and Personal Care19.41%2.25%0.51%0.49%0.05%0.33%
Business and Finance21.64%2.90%0.78%0.63%0.03%0.24%
Computers and Electronics21.55%2.55%1.11%0.78%0.03%0.30%
Construction22.41%2.05%1.70%1.32%0.06%0.44%
Consulting19.96%2.57%1.04%0.78%0.03%0.29%
Creative Services/Agency23.01%2.95%1.19%0.93%0.04%0.35%
Daily Deals/E-Coupons13.69%1.89%0.13%0.09%0.01%0.09%
eCommerce16.87%2.60%0.34%0.27%0.03%0.21%
Education and Training22.44%2.94%0.63%0.54%0.03%0.20%
Entertainment and Events21.48%2.42%0.56%0.46%0.03%0.26%
Gambling17.35%2.92%0.44%0.48%0.04%0.16%
Games22.08%3.38%0.55%0.60%0.04%0.23%
Government26.77%3.67%0.57%0.47%0.02%0.13%
Health and Fitness23.23%3.06%0.52%0.51%0.04%0.37%
Hobbies29.35%5.65%0.39%0.31%0.03%0.23%
Home and Garden25.61%4.04%0.71%0.49%0.05%0.37%
Insurance19.90%2.11%0.75%0.79%0.04%0.22%
Legal22.30%2.90%0.79%0.66%0.03%0.21%
Manufacturing23.25%2.64%1.56%1.06%0.04%0.36%
Marketing and Advertising18.50%2.15%0.88%0.70%0.03%0.28%
Media and Publishing22.60%4.69%0.33%0.21%0.01%0.12%
Medical, Dental, and Healthcare22.87%2.67%0.82%0.81%0.05%0.29%
Mobile21.28%2.48%0.76%0.73%0.04%0.39%
Music and Musicians23.02%2.91%0.68%0.52%0.03%0.29%
Non-Profit25.58%2.94%0.55%0.46%0.02%0.19%
Other23.45%3.08%0.88%0.69%0.04%0.28%
Pharmaceuticals19.67%2.68%0.82%0.71%0.03%0.22%
Photo and Video26.49%3.84%0.81%0.69%0.04%0.40%
Politics22.79%2.23%0.50%0.46%0.04%0.21%
Professional Services21.11%2.73%1.00%0.77%0.03%0.31%
Public Relations20.32%1.81%0.87%0.67%0.02%0.24%
Real Estate22.03%2.20%0.76%0.64%0.05%0.33%
Recruitment and Staffing20.57%2.53%0.64%0.64%0.03%0.31%
Religion26.52%3.28%0.22%0.21%0.02%0.12%
Restaurant23.54%1.48%0.37%0.29%0.03%0.30%
Restaurant and Venue22.59%1.46%0.65%0.55%0.04%0.39%
Retail22.06%2.82%0.44%0.37%0.03%0.28%
Social Networks and Online Communities22.14%3.73%0.44%0.37%0.03%0.23%
Software and Web App22.03%2.61%1.11%0.89%0.03%0.39%
Sports26.13%3.61%0.58%0.50%0.03%0.27%
Telecommunications20.76%2.31%1.19%0.94%0.03%0.27%
Travel and Transportation20.80%2.43%0.74%0.53%0.03%0.24%
Vitamin Supplements17.02%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.

YouTube video

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

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