What’s a Good Email Open Rate?

A good email rate can be anything starting from 17%. A good open rate can vary depending on various factors, such as the industry, target audience and content of the email. To ensure a successful email marketing campaign, it’s important to understand what an acceptable open rate is for your business.

Before we delve further into what a good email open rate is, let’s find out more about it. 

What’s an Email Open Rate?

An email open rate is a metric used to measure the success of an email marketing campaign. It is calculated by dividing the number of emails opened by the number that were sent out. The higher your open rate, the more successful your campaign was in connecting with its intended audience.

To get a good email open rate, it’s important to understand who you are sending messages to and how to craft content that will be engaging.

What’s the Average Email Open Rate?

The average email open rate for all industries hovers around 35%, although this can vary depending on the industry you’re targeting. For example, emails to business-to-business (B2B) audiences have a slightly higher open rate than those sent to business-to-consumer (B2C) customers, while promotional emails usually have a lower response rate than transactional messages.

The type of content you send can also affect your open rate. Personalized emails tend to have higher open rates than generic, “spray-and-pray” messages.

Why is Email Open Rate Important?

Email open rate is important because it can provide insight into the effectiveness of your email campaigns. When you get a good open rate, it means that you’re connecting with your audience and building trust with them. On the other hand, if your open rates are low, it could mean that your content isn’t resonating or that recipients don’t find it relevant.

Take a look at Print Bind Ship’s comprehensive guide to email marketing to learn more.

Industry-Specific Email Open Rates

When it comes to determining a good email open rate, it’s important to consider the industry you’re targeting. Different industries have different average open rates, and understanding these benchmarks can help ensure that your campaigns are successful. Listed below are the average email open rates of some of the major industries:

• Agriculture: 21.33%
• Art: 26.27%
• Beauty: 16.65%
• Business: 36.49%
• Colleges/universities: 20.42%
• E-commerce: 15.68%
• Education: 23.42%
• Electronics: 19.29%
• Finance: 21.56%
• Fitness: 23.87%
• Gambling: 21.1%
• Government: 28.77%
• Health: 21.48%
• Insurance: 21.36%
• Legal: 22%
• Manufacturing: 41.07%
• Marketing: 17.38%
• Media: 40.67%
• Music: 21.88%
• Politics: 22.94%
• Public service entities: 27.86%
• Real estate: 19.17%
• Religious: 27.62%
• Restaurant: 19.77%
• Retail: 14%
• Schools: 22.46%
• Software: 39.77%
• Sports: 24.57%
• Telecom: 39.13%

If you are in one of these industries, you should aim for an open rate at or above the average for your industry.

6 Factors Impacting Email Open Rates

Apart from the industry you’re targeting, a few other factors can impact your email open rate. These include:

1. Subject Line

The subject line is one of the most important elements of an email, as it determines whether people will click and read your message. A good subject line should be attention-grabbing, concise and relevant to the content of the email.

2. Sender’s Name

Next is the sender’s name, which should be recognizable and trustworthy to get recipients to open your messages.

3. Timing

The time you send emails can have a huge impact on open rates. For example, sending emails during work hours may result in higher open rates than if you send them late at night or on a weekend.

4. Mobile Optimization

Mobile optimization is also essential for improving your open rates. With mobile devices accounting for the majority of email opens, ensuring that your emails are easy to read on a small screen is key. This means making sure they are optimized for both mobile and desktop devices and that they load quickly.

5. Content Quality

The content of your emails should be relevant to the recipient’s interests as well as engaging and informative. If you’re sending generic, boring emails, people won’t be motivated to open them.

6. Personalization

Personalizing emails with the recipient’s name or other demographic information can help increase engagement and open rates.

What’s Email Delivery Rate?

Email delivery rate is a metric similar to email open rate, but it measures how many emails were delivered to the intended recipient. It is calculated by dividing the number of emails sent successfully by the total number of emails sent. Email delivery rates are important because if your email doesn’t reach its intended recipients, there’s no way for them to open it and engage with your content.

What’s the Average Email Delivery Rate?

The average delivery rate for all industries is 90% to 95%, although this can vary depending on the industry you’re targeting. Many factors can affect email delivery rates, such as spam filters, blacklists and invalid email addresses. It’s important to ensure that your emails are compliant with anti-spam regulations and that your list of contacts is up to date so that your messages reach their intended recipients.

Why is Email Delivery Rate Important?

Email delivery rate is important because it helps ensure that your messages reach their intended recipients. If your email doesn’t make it to its recipient, you won’t be able to engage with them and build a relationship. Having a low email delivery rate can also hurt the sender’s reputation, which can lead to deliverability issues down the line.

To maintain a good email delivery rate, it’s important to ensure that your messages are compliant with anti-spam regulations and that your list of contacts is up to date.

What’s Click-To-Open-Rate?

Click-to-open rate (CTOR) is a metric that measures how effective your email campaigns are in terms of engagement. It’s calculated by dividing the number of unique clicks on links contained within an email by the total number of opens for that same email.

CTOR gives you insight into how engaged users are with your content, as it shows you how many people followed through with a call-to-action contained in your email.

Keys to Crafting the Perfect Email for an Improved Email Rate

When crafting your emails, you should always keep your open rate goals in mind. Below are some best practices to help ensure that your messages get opened.

Segmentation: Segmenting your email list based on interests and demographics allows you to create personalized content that resonates with each recipient. This can help increase engagement and open rates.

Design: Your emails should be visually appealing and well-designed in order to grab recipients’ attention.

Testing: Test different subject lines, sender names and content to see which strategies work best for your audience.

Call to action: Including a clear call to action in your emails can help drive recipients to take action. This could be anything from signing up for an event to downloading a resource.

Get Ready to Boost Your Email Open Rates

To ensure that your emails are opened, it’s important to create compelling content, personalize emails with the recipient’s name or demographic information and test different strategies to find out what works best for your audience. With this in mind, you can create emails that resonate with your subscribers and encourage them to open and read your messages.

Contact Print Bind Ship (PBS) to handle your business’s order fulfillment needs while you focus on managing the jump in orders that will follow the rise in your email open rates. In addition to order fulfillment, PBS provides third-party logistics (3PL) services.

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