When it comes to monitoring the health of their email sends, marketers often lean on email marketing analytics. They go to the analytics dashboard of the email software they’re using and look at conversion rates, email sharing rates, and ROI among a host of other metrics.
What a number of email marketers don’t know, though, is that they can take advantage of another type of data: email marketing benchmarks.
Email service provider Campaign Monitor recently published its 2019 email marketing benchmarks guide, which is based on analysis of more than 30 billion emails sent through the company’s email platform by brands spread across more than 20 industries.
Why email marketing benchmarks are important
Looking at current email marketing benchmarks provides you with a strong idea of how your emails are performing compared to different industry standards. This makes it much easier for you to determine areas of your email marketing strategy that need improvement.
Imagine opening your analytics dashboard and seeing a click-to-open rate of just 5%. This is much lower than the average click-to-open rate across all industries, which sits at 14.10%.
By comparing your own data with email marketing benchmark data, you can easily determine that your click-to-open rates need some work.
Here are some of the crucial data points you can find in the guide.
Email benchmarks across all industries
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- Average open rate – 17.92%
- Average click-through rate (CTR) – 2.69%
- Average click-to-open rate – 14.10%
- Average unsubscribe rate – 0.17%
- Average bounce rate – 1.06
Best days for sending emails
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- Highest open rates – Thursday
- Highest click-through rates – Tuesday
- Highest click-to-open rates – Saturday
- Lowest unsubscribe rates – Sunday or Monday
- Lowest bounce rates – Monday
Worst days for sending emails
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- Lowest open rates – Sunday
- Lowest click-through rates – Sunday
- Lowest click-to-open rates – Monday
- Highest unsubscribe rates – Wednesday
- Highest bounce rates – Friday
Top industries (by open rate)
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- Nonprofit – 20.39%
- Agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting – 20.13%
- Government – 19.79%
- Healthcare – 19.12%
- Other – 18.94
Top industries (by click-to-open rate)
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- Agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting – 18.03%
- Media, entertainment, and publishing – 17.15%
- Real estate, design, and construction activities – 16.47%
- Unknown – 15.52%
- Government – 15.11%
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You can use email marketing benchmark data to enhance a wide range of email marketing metrics. Here are some techniques you can try immediately.
Open rate. This is the percentage of subscribers (out of the total number) who opened your email campaign.
The best way to improve open rates is to optimize your subject lines through personalization and incentivizing language (ex. Exclusive offer, % off, etc.)
Click-through rate (CTR). This is the percentage of subscribers (out of the total number) who click on a link in your emails.
You can improve your CTR by creating stronger segments that allow you to send the most relevant content possible.
Click-to-open rate. This is the percentage of subscribers who opened your email and then clicked on the link in the email.
To improve your click-to-open rate, make sure that your email renders perfectly on any device, and include prominent CTAs that are easy to click.
Unsubscribe rate. This is the percentage of subscribers who opt-out of receiving any more emails from you.
You can avoid high unsubscribe rates by maintaining list hygiene from the start. You should send re-engagement emails to disengaged subscribers, but don’t be afraid to remove them from your list immediately if they still don’t respond.
While analytics plays a central role in any email marketing strategy, you shouldn’t be afraid to think outside the box and monitor data such as current email marketing benchmarks.
Benchmarks allow you to not only see how your email health stacks up against the competition, but also how you can make the necessary improvements.
You can get detailed information by checking out Campaign Monitor’s 2019 Email Marketing Benchmarks Guide.
