Average email open rates by industry 2024

Is your email marketing working as well as you hoped?

If your email marketing investments aren't producing the results you expected, one of the first things you should do is check your open rate. Open rates are a great indicator of how engaged your email subscribers are with your content and brand. A low open rate could be a sign that you're in the wrong segment, reaching the wrong people, or your content lacks creativity. But what is a good email open rate for your industry? And perhaps most importantly, how do you improve a low email open rate?

Here, we answer all your questions, including average email open rates by industry in 2024, why open rates are so important, and how to improve them if they're low.

let's start!

Average email open rates by industry in 2024:

Email marketing? Not yet?

Every year we hear more and more people saying that email marketing is “dead.” And year after year, email marketing proves that it’s still one of the most powerful marketing channels out there. The definition of a “good” ROI varies by situation: for stocks, a 7% ROI is considered satisfactory, while for larger companies, a figure closer to 10% is better, whereas for smaller businesses, the desirable ROI range is 15% to 30%..
That means that for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can potentially recoup $36. Sure, email is one of the oldest digital marketing channels, but the fact that it’s still popular after all these years is a testament to its effectiveness.

It's no surprise that email marketing is so powerful. After all, over 4 billion people worldwide use email (The Radicati Group). That's roughly 52% of the world's population. And 60% of those email users say they enjoy receiving promotional emails every week. Email Marketing is probably important to your brand. If you're not using it yet, start using it. If you're already using email marketing, you should be tracking your email marketing benchmarks to make sure you're getting the most out of your investment.

Email Marketing Benchmarks

Email Marketing Benchmarks Here's how to track the performance of your email marketing campaigns. We're focusing on email open rates here, but there are some important benchmarks and metrics to follow. Tracking and measuring benchmarks will help you build a stronger strategy and continue to grow your business year after year.

What is open rate?

Open rate is a term that describes the percentage of recipients who open an email after receiving it. It's a very simple concept that can provide email marketers with a lot of information about the effectiveness of their emails. Email marketing campaigns Or the effectiveness of your email marketing list. Here's how to calculate your email open rate:

Your email marketing service provider should be able to provide you with detailed information on your email open rates and even email marketing metrics for each individual subscriber on your list. Open rates are a great way to find people on your list who aren't engaged with your content so you can target them with win-back campaigns (sometimes called win-back campaigns). Re-engagement campaigns) is intended to purge inactive and unengaged subscribers from your list. We recommend that you purge your email list at least once a year.

What is a good email open rate?

A good email open rate is one that meets the industry-wide average, which is around 17% to 28%. However, average open rates vary depending on the industry. The best way to determine a good email open rate for your business is to track your actual open rates across an entire quarter and average them. This will give you a benchmark to measure your open rates over time and help you make sure that your open rates are continually improving.

Why open rates matter

Open rates can tell you a lot about a particular email or email marketing campaign.

• If your email makes it to the inbox and doesn't get caught in increasingly powerful spam filters
• If you target the right audience segments
• If the subject line is attractive enough to make someone open the email
• If the preheader text is attractive

It goes without saying that you won't get much return on your email marketing investment if no one opens your emails. This has a ripple effect: if no one opens your emails, they won't click on your landing page or sales page, and no clicks mean no sales. If your open rates are low, test the following:

Average Email Open Rates by Industry – 2024 Benchmarks

So, what are the average email open rates by industry? In this section, Email Marketing Benchmarks 2024As you can see, government agencies have the highest email open rate at 46.3%, followed by medical, dental, and healthcare in second place at 46.29%, and animal care and veterinary rounding out the top three at 45.84%. For the past few years With so much uncertainty, it's not all that surprising to see these three industries seeing increases above previously reported figures.

Meanwhile, the three industries with the lowest email open rates are Information Technology (33.53%), Media and Publishing (33.35%), with Gaming coming in last at 29.88%.

The difference between B2B and B2C email

There are some differences in email open rates between B2B and B2C industries. According to Smarts Insights, the average open rate for B2C emails is 19.7%. B2B emails have a lower open rate of 15.1%.

Email open rates vary by type of email

The type of email also impacts open rates. According to a report by Flodesk: Welcome email Welcome emails have an astounding 86% open rate, while transactional emails have a lower open rate, averaging 40-50%. This is important because many brands are missing out on a key marketing opportunity by not taking advantage of transactional and welcome emails.

Increase email open rates

If your email open rate is low, there are a few things you can do to improve it. The best part is that it will impact other aspects of your marketing campaigns too. Let's take a look at some email marketing tips to improve your open rates. Any industry is acceptable.

Create a compelling subject line

The subject line plays a big role in getting email recipients to open your email. An effective subject line should grab the reader's attention and entice them to click on your email. This usually means using a subject line that piques curiosity or evokes an emotion.

Here are some quick tips to improve your email subject lines:

• Keep it short
• Include emojis
• Use personalization
• Adding numbers
• A/B Testing

Use preheader text strategically

The preheader text can be between 3 and 250 characters and will be displayed below the subject line in some email clients. In some clients it will not be displayed at all, so subject An email can function just fine without a header. Because headers are very short, we recommend that you start your preheader text with the most interesting information. Here are some tips to help you write compelling preheader text:

• Make it unique (don't just repeat the theme)
• Instead of summarizing the email, create curiosity
• Add a call to action

Improved deliverability

Email deliverability is very important for every email marketer. Higher deliverability means that your emails have a higher chance of reaching your recipients' inboxes instead of being marked as spam or bounced. Here are some email deliverability tips to help you make sure your emails reach the inbox:

• Organize your email list
• Use correct spelling and grammar
• Ensure you comply with email marketing regulations like CAN-SPAM and GDPR

Include valuable content

If your only focus in emails is selling to your subscribers, they will eventually stop opening them, which is why it's important to mix up your emails with different types of emails. Email Marketing Strategy Include content that is educational, entertaining, and engaging for your subscribers. The more valuable your email is to your reader, the more likely it is to be opened.

Create a mobile-first email

According to Constant Contact, as of 2023, 63% of email opens happen on mobile devices. If your email isn't at least mobile-friendly, you're missing out on a huge number of recipients. Here's how to ensure your email works well for mobile email users:

• Use one column mail template
• Keep your design and content short, clear and concise
• Use fonts of appropriate sizes that are easy to read
• Reduce the image
• Use a single call to action

Personalize your email

Personalization has been a trend in email marketing for years, and for good reason: Approximately 88% of US marketers have seen a measurable improvement in their campaign performance thanks to personalization (Instapage). Here are some ways you can increase your personalization to improve your email open rates:

• Instantly segment your subscribers
• Use the subscriber's name
• Use dynamic content
• Send emails in the recipient's time zone
• Look at your email data to see what emails resonate

summary

As an email marketer, you want to stay on top of how your campaigns and individual emails are performing. Open rates are the first and most obvious indicator of whether your marketing messages are reaching your target audience. While you can use email open rates by industry to see how your own emails are performing, we highly recommend using these numbers as a goal and checking your own email marketing data to establish benchmarks to measure your performance against.

About the Author

Writer

Jacinda Santora is a copywriter, marketing consultant, and owner of JMS Copy. She enjoys combining her SEO expertise with her experience and love of marketing to create high-quality marketing related content.