Email Marketing Benchmarks: Key Insights & Statistics in 2024

Understanding email marketing benchmarks and key statistics is essential for assessing the impact of the success of your campaigns.

They serve as a critical indicator of your performance, enable you to understand how your email marketing campaigns compare to industry standards across key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and more.

With 4.26 billion email users worldwide¹ email communication is essential for providing a fast, cost-effective, and accessible way to exchange information, both in personal and professional contexts.

Similarly, email marketing serves as the pillar of digital marketing with a market value of 7.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, and expected to reach 17.9 billion U.S. dollars by 2027.²

Key email marketing benchmarks

Tracking email marketing metrics is important for understanding your email deliverability status and setting realistic goals, while highlighting areas that need improvement, such as subject line effectiveness or audience engagement strategies.

Email marketing benchmarks also offer insights into broader industry trends by providing statistical data on industry averages of email marketing metrics.

Open rates, click through rates (CTR), click-to-open rates, bounce rates, unsubscribe rates, ROI improve rates, and automation rates are the key indicators of a successful email marketing campaign.

The effectiveness of marketing and transactional emails are evaluated similarly, based on their key metrics. However, the data on transactional email benchmarks is limited, therefore, below mentioned statistics are also relevant for transactional email benchmarks.

Here are recent statistics on key email marketing metrics with overall and industry average rates:

Open rates

Open rates represent the amount of opened emails by recipients. By analyzing open rates, you can identify inactive subscribers and implement win-back campaigns to re-engage them or remove disengaged users from your email list.

Based on a report in 2022, almost 67% of marketers observed an increase in their open rates compared to 2021.³

Average email open rate is between 25-40% for marketing emails:

• 41% according to MailerLite data,⁴
• 38.5% according to HubSpot data,⁵
• 34% according to Mailchimp data,⁶
• 27% according to GetResponse data.⁷

Above mentioned data is obtained from Campaign Monitor,⁸ MailerLite,⁹ WebFX,¹⁰ and Mailchimp¹¹ reports. We included multiple sources for more transparent information on key email marketing metrics.

Click-through rates (CTR)

Click-through rates are defined as the percentage of users who clicked on links that are included in a marketing email.

Average click-through-rate of marketing emails is between 2-3%:

• 3% based on Mailchimp data,¹²
• 2.5% based on WebFX data,¹³
• 2% based on GetResponse data.¹⁴

Click-through rates by industry

Above mentioned data is obtained from Campaign Monitor,¹⁵ WebFX,¹⁶ and Mailchimp¹⁷ reports.

Bounce rates

A bounce rate indicates the percentage of emails that are not delivered to the recipient’s inbox.

Average marketing email bounce rate is 1-3%:

• 2.5% based on GetResponse data,¹⁸
• 2.5% based on WebFX data,¹⁹
• 1% based on Mailchimp data.²⁰

Bounce rates by industry

Above mentioned data is obtained from MailerLite,²¹ WebFX,²² and GetResponse ²³ reports.

Unsubscribe rates

Unsubscribe rates indicate the percentage of recipients who decided not to receive further communications from a sender or mailing list about email campaigns.

Average unsubscribe rates for marketing emails is between 0.1-1%:

• 0.9% according to WebFX data,²⁴
• 0.3% according to MailerLite data,²⁵
• 0.1% according to GetResponse data.²⁶

Unsubscribe rates by industry

Above mentioned data is obtained from Campaign Monitor,²⁷ MailerLite,²⁸ and WebFX²⁹ reports.

Email marketing return of investment (ROI) rates

Understanding email marketing ROI is crucial as it guides budget allocation, informs strategic email marketing decisions and resource optimization. It also supports long-term email marketing strategy and offers insights into customer preferences.

According to a 2023 report,³⁰ 

• Approximately 52% of marketers stated a two-time improvement rate when compared to their 2022 email marketing ROI rates,
• 6% of marketers experienced a four times improvement on ROI rate,
• 13% of marketers stated there was no ROI improvement.

Automated emails

According to a report,³¹ 

• Approximately 58% of marketers utilize automation as a part of their email marketing strategy,
• Their overall satisfaction with marketing automation efforts can be improved. 69% of marketers experienced some success in leveraging marketing automation, 28% of marketers perceived automation as very successful and 3% stated they experienced a failure in their marketing automation processes.

Similarly, around 70% of marketing professionals are expected to increase their budget for marketing automation.³² 

More on email marketing statistics

Types of email marketing campaigns

According to a survey in 2023,³³ most popular types of email marketing campaigns are:

• newsletters with 17%
• promotional email campaigns with 15%.

Objectives

Another survey ³⁴ shows that, leading email marketing campaign objective for marketers are:

• product awareness and promotions with 16%
• retention and newsletters with 15%.

Optimal day to send marketing emails

35% of marketers preferred Tuesday as the best day to send marketing emails. The second most preferred day for marketers is Wednesday with 20%.³⁵

Why is it important to understand email marketing benchmarks?

By understanding where you stand relative to competitors, you can strategically enhance your market position in email marketing. Ultimately, aligning your efforts with established benchmarks can lead to more successful campaigns, which would foster deeper engagement with your audience and drive efficient results.

Performance measurement

Benchmarks provide a standard to measure the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.

By knowing the average open rates, click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and bounce rates, you can measure where your campaigns excel and where there is room for improvement.

Goal setting

Having a clear understanding of email marketing benchmarks helps in setting realistic and achievable goals for your campaigns.

This can motivate your team and drive continuous improvement in your marketing efforts.

Strategic insights

Email marketing benchmarks can offer insights into the current industry trends and consumer behaviors within your industry.

For example, a sudden dip or rise in average open rates could indicate changing consumer preferences or the effectiveness of certain email marketing strategies.

Competitive analysis

Understanding email marketing benchmarks allows you to compare your performance with that of your competitors.

This can help you to identify competitive advantages or areas where you need to catch up.

Resource allocation

You can make more informed decisions about where to allocate your resources for maximum impact when you understand the underperforming or outperforming aspects of your email marketing strategy.

Innovation and optimization

Email marketing benchmarks can serve as a starting point for testing new strategies and innovations for your email campaigns.

By continuously striving to exceed industry averages, you can optimize your email marketing for better engagement and conversion.

External links

• 1. “Number of e-mail users worldwide 2026“. Statista. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 2. “Email marketing market size 2027“. Statista. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 3. “E-mail open rates changes worldwide 2023“. Statista. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 4. “Email Marketing Benchmarks and Stats by Industry for 2024“. MailerLite. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 5. “Email Open Rates By Industry“. HubSpot. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 6. “Email Marketing Benchmarks & Industry Statistics“. Mailchimp. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 7. “2023 Email Marketing Benchmarks“. GetResponse. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 8. “Email Marketing Benchmarks and Statistics for 2022“. Campaign Monitor. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 9. “Email Marketing Benchmarks and Stats by Industry for 2024“. MailerLite. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 10. “Email Marketing Benchmarks: 2024 Industry Data“. WebFX. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 11. “Email Marketing Benchmarks & Industry Statistics“. Mailchimp. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 12. “Email Marketing Benchmarks & Industry Statistics“. Mailchimp. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 13. “Email Marketing Benchmarks: 2024 Industry Data“. WebFX. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 14. “2023 Email Marketing Benchmarks“. GetResponse. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 15. “Email Marketing Benchmarks and Statistics for 2022“. Campaign Monitor. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 16. “Email Marketing Benchmarks: 2024 Industry Data“. WebFX. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 17. “Email Marketing Benchmarks & Industry Statistics“. Mailchimp. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 18. “2023 Email Marketing Benchmarks“. GetResponse. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 19. “Email Marketing Benchmarks: 2024 Industry Data“. WebFX. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 20. “Email Marketing Benchmarks & Industry Statistics“. Mailchimp. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 21. “Email Marketing Benchmarks and Stats by Industry for 2024“. MailerLite. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 22. “Email Marketing Benchmarks: 2024 Industry Data“. WebFX. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 23. “2023 Email Marketing Benchmarks“. GetResponse. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 24. “Email Marketing Benchmarks: 2024 Industry Data“. WebFX. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 25. “Email Marketing Benchmarks and Stats by Industry for 2024“. MailerLite. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 26. “2023 Email Marketing Benchmarks“. GetResponse. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 27. “Email Marketing Benchmarks and Statistics for 2022“. Campaign Monitor. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 28. “Email Marketing Benchmarks and Stats by Industry for 2024“. MailerLite. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 29. “Email Marketing Benchmarks: 2024 Industry Data“. WebFX. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 30. “E-mail marketing ROI improve rates 2023“. Statista. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 31. “World’s most automated marketing channels 2024“. Statista. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 32. “Global plans to change automation budget 2024“. Statista. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 33. “Top e-mail marketing campaign types 2023“. Statista. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 34. “Top e-mail marketing campaign objectives 2024“. Statista. Retrieved March 25, 2024
• 35. “E-mail marketing: best week day for campaigns 2023“. Statista. Retrieved March 25, 2024