Your email report shows plenty of opens, but few subscribers click. It is hard to tell whether the message missed the mark or the tracking overstated engagement.
Compare that campaign with an outdated average or a different send type, and you may change the wrong thing.
Email marketing benchmarks help you compare performance with similar campaigns. Match the industry, reporting period and metric definitions, then review open rate, click-through rate (CTR) and click-to-open rate (CTOR) together.
Email Marketing Benchmarks at a Glance
MailerLite reports an overall median open rate of 43.46%, a median CTR of 2.09% and a median CTOR of 6.81%.
Its email benchmark report covers more than 3.6 million campaigns from 181,000 approved accounts. The underlying data runs from December 2024 to November 2025, providing a reference for 2026 planning.
Metric | Overall median | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
Open rate | 43.46% | Recorded unique openers as a share of delivered emails |
Click-through rate | 2.09% | Unique clickers as a share of delivered emails |
Click-to-open rate | 6.81% | Unique clickers as a share of recorded unique openers |
These are provider-specific benchmarks, not universal performance targets. A median is the middle value in a distribution. It does not mean every industry, audience or campaign should achieve that result.
Open-based figures can also reflect automated image loading. Their usefulness depends on how closely the source’s measurement rules match your own.
Open Rate vs CTR vs CTOR
Open rate, CTR and CTOR use different denominators. Understanding that difference helps you interpret the numbers without confusing customer activity with tracking activity.
Metric | Formula | Useful question |
|---|---|---|
Open rate | Recorded unique openers ÷ delivered emails × 100 | How often did the system record an open? |
CTR | Unique clickers ÷ delivered emails × 100 | What share of delivered emails generated a tracked click? |
CTOR | Unique clickers ÷ recorded unique openers × 100 | How does clicking compare with recorded opening activity? |
A unique clicker is a recipient who clicks at least one tracked link in that email. Multiple clicks by the same recipient should not become multiple people in this calculation.
Delivered emails exclude messages reported as bounced. Delivery still does not guarantee inbox placement or that a person saw the message.
An open usually depends on a tracking image loading. A recipient can read an email without loading that image. Automated systems can also load it without the recipient reading.
For a single campaign using compatible counts:
CTOR (%) = CTR (%) ÷ open rate (%) × 100
The reporting window, filters and counting rules must match. If there are no recorded opens, CTOR is undefined.
This relationship does not mean you can divide a report’s median CTR by its median open rate to reproduce its median CTOR. Each median summarizes a different set of campaign-level rates.
Email Marketing Benchmarks by Industry
Industry comparisons are more useful when every column comes from the same report. The following figures use the same MailerLite dataset and reporting period as the overview above.
Industry | Median open rate | Median CTR | Median CTOR |
|---|---|---|---|
Software and web app | 39.31% | 1.15% | 5.40% |
Business and finance | 43.34% | 2.37% | 7.96% |
Non-profit | 52.38% | 2.90% | 8.24% |
Higher education | 43.98% | 2.15% | 9.15% |
E-commerce | 32.67% | 1.07% | 4.01% |
Retail | 37.47% | 1.27% | 4.51% |
Legal | 42.58% | 4.90% | 14.72% |
Manufacturing | 37.36% | 4.22% | 14.82% |
Media | 42.97% | 4.10% | 12.92% |
Source: MailerLite’s reported medians from December 2024–November 2025.
Among these categories, the highest open rate and highest click rates belong to different industries. That illustrates why an impressive open rate does not automatically mean stronger click engagement.
Choose the closest relevant category, then consider differences within it. A software newsletter, a product announcement and a sales follow-up can serve different purposes.
The “Software and web app” category is a useful reference for software businesses. It should not be treated as a dedicated benchmark for every B2B SaaS audience.
Campaign vs Automated Email Benchmarks
Campaigns and automated emails often reach people in different situations. A scheduled promotion goes to a selected audience, while an abandoned-cart message follows a specific action.
Omnisend’s campaign and automation benchmarks include this comparison using 2025 data:
Email type | Reported CTR |
|---|---|
Campaign emails | 0.74% |
Automated emails | 4.66% |
The automated rate is approximately 6.3 times the campaign rate in that comparison. This describes Omnisend’s dataset; it is not a guaranteed improvement from switching to automation.
Keep these figures separate from MailerLite’s industry medians. They come from a different provider and use a different reporting summary.
An ecommerce automation benchmark also serves a different purpose from a sales-cadence benchmark. Review the distinction between sequences and campaigns before choosing the comparison that fits your send.
How Apple MPP and Bots Affect Email Metrics
Privacy features and security tools can record activity that does not represent a deliberate customer action. They affect the interpretation of opens, clicks and CTOR in different ways.
Privacy-protected opens
Apple Mail Privacy Protection can download remote content in the background when Protect Mail Activity is enabled. That can trigger a tracking pixel whether or not the recipient reads the message.
Additional recorded opens can raise open rate and lower CTOR. They do not directly change CTR, because CTR uses delivered emails as its denominator.
A fixed subtraction cannot reliably turn a tracked open rate into actual human readership. Filtering identified proxy activity improves interpretation, but it still does not reveal every person who read the email.
Automated clicks
Security scanners and link-preview systems can open links automatically. Those events can inflate click counts, CTR and CTOR.
Mailchimp’s bot-filtering documentation explains how it identifies suspected automated activity and filters it from reports. It also notes that enabling filtering can lower reported opens and clicks.
Check whether the reports you compare use similar filtering settings. If a provider changes its filters, a sudden change in engagement may reflect measurement rather than a change in audience interest.
How to Compare Your Campaign With Benchmarks
Start with your own comparable sends, then use industry data to add context. A benchmark can highlight a result worth investigating without identifying its cause.
Match the email type. Compare newsletters with similar newsletters and behavior-triggered messages with similar automations.
Match the audience. Consider industry, customer stage, location and how recipients joined your list.
Align the measurement rules. Use compatible denominators, unique-recipient counts, reporting windows and bot filters.
Check delivery and list health. Review bounces, complaints and unsubscribes alongside engagement.
Review outcomes. Connect clicks with the campaign’s goal, such as a purchase, registration, reply or meeting.
A small gap below a benchmark does not establish a performance problem. Look for repeated patterns across comparable campaigns before making a major change.
A worked campaign example
Suppose a software newsletter records the following results. All counts use the same reporting window and filtering settings.
Input | Count |
|---|---|
Delivered emails | 10,000 |
Recorded unique openers | 2,200 |
Unique clickers | 110 |
The calculations are:
Open rate: 2,200 ÷ 10,000 × 100 = 22%
CTR: 110 ÷ 10,000 × 100 = 1.1%
CTOR: 110 ÷ 2,200 × 100 = 5%
This hypothetical campaign’s CTR is close to the software category’s 1.15% median. Its recorded open rate is considerably lower than that category’s open benchmark.
That difference does not prove the subject line failed. Different privacy filters, image-loading behavior, audience composition or delivery conditions could contribute.
First establish whether the measurements are comparable. Then test the subject line, offer or call to action against your own previous campaigns.
How to Improve Email Performance
The best change addresses a specific issue in your own reports. Use email marketing benchmarks to prioritize investigation, then measure the effect of each change.
Send to a clearly defined audience
Group recipients around a shared interest, customer stage or reason to receive the message. A useful segment should help you choose more relevant content.
Audience segmentation can support that process by organizing recipients for targeted communication. Keep re-engagement and suppression decisions tied to your sending cadence and meaningful activity rather than opens alone.
Make the next action clear
Give readers a clear reason to click and make the main call to action easy to find. Check the email on mobile and confirm that the link leads where the message promises.
Review the landing page separately. An email can earn clicks while a confusing form or checkout prevents conversions.
Test one meaningful change
Compare subject lines, offers or CTA placement across similar audience groups. Changing all three at once makes it harder to understand which change helped.
Choose the success measure before sending. For a registration campaign, completed registrations may matter more than a small increase in recorded opens.
Respect subscriber expectations
Keep the content and frequency consistent with what subscribers expected. Watch for rising complaints, unsubscribes or falling click activity across repeated sends.
Use re-engagement and suppression rules that fit your audience and permission practices. A fixed inactivity period will not suit every newsletter or buying cycle.
Connect Email Engagement With Customer Records
Email results become more useful when they help you decide who to follow up with and what to discuss.
KudosCRM’s email tracking connects supported open, click and reply activity with customer records. It separates identified Apple MPP activity from reported open rates, with tracking capabilities varying by sending path.
Its sales email sequences provide enrollment and outcome reporting, including opens, replies and booked meetings. Those enrollment-based results need their own interpretation when compared with delivered-email campaign rates.
For a practical explanation of what to prioritize, the guide to campaign engagement and stats connects delivery and engagement signals with customer follow-up.