Every Email Marketing Benchmark You Will Ever Need
October 20, 2015
Benchmark
noun bench·mark \ˈbench-ˌmärk\
: something that can be used as a way to judge the quality or level of other, similar things
Not too long ago I worked for a company with a very large email database. They sent out daily emails, which promoted sales relevant to their target market, were wonderfully designed, and had appropriate CTAs. One of my tasks was to report on Open Rate and Click Rate weekly. At my first meeting (with various departments in attendance), I showed the email statistics for the week prior and asked if there were any questions. There was only one: "What is the industry average?" (i.e. how do our numbers compare).
Basically, we all want to know how we stack up.
Benchmarks can be a very useful tool — they act as a measuring stick, so to speak, for marketers to evaluate the effectiveness of their efforts, for better or worse. This is especially helpful for email, which can be tweaked and tested easily with many opportunities to try again. Below you will find some helpful benchmarks to use in evaluating your emails.
First, a Word About External vs. Internal Benchmarks
For any type of benchmark, there are essentially two kinds: external and internal. External benchmarks compare you against the world. They set the bar for what you should be achieving according to everyone else. Internal benchmarks compare a current tactic or method with past ones inside the company. While external benchmarks give you a picture of where you exist in the world (much like student ranking in high school), internal benchmarks are often more realistic and useful in setting goals for your company (e.g. I scored an 80% on a math test; next time I will aim for 85%).
External Email Marketing Benchmarks
When it comes to email, there are typically four main statistics marketers track: Open Rate, Click Rate, Bounce Rate, and Unsubscribe Rate.
In August 2015 MailChimp released the following data after they “scanned hundreds of millions of emails delivered by our system ... and calculated the average unique open rates, average unique click rates, average unique soft bounces, average unique hard bounces, and average unique abuse complaint rate by industry.”
Their research found the following averages:
Unique Open Rate: 22.3%
Click Rate: 2.8%
Hard Bounce Rate: 0.6%
Unsubscribe Rate: 0.27%
However, given the variance between different types of businesses, MailChimp broke out these statistics further into the following industries:
|
Industry |
Open |
Click |
Soft |
Hard |
Abuse |
Unsub |
|
Agriculture and Food Services |
25.63% |
3.39% |
0.67% |
0.51% |
0.03% |
0.28% |
|
Architecture and Construction |
24.97% |
3.09% |
1.64% |
1.17% |
0.04% |
0.36% |
|
Arts and Artists |
27.86% |
2.98% |
0.76% |
0.55% |
0.03% |
0.27% |
|
Beauty and Personal Care |
19.41% |
2.25% |
0.51% |
0.49% |
0.05% |
0.33% |
|
Business and Finance |
21.64% |
2.90% |
0.78% |
0.63% |
0.03% |
0.24% |
|
Computers and Electronics |
21.55% |
2.55% |
1.11% |
0.78% |
0.03% |
0.30% |
|
Construction |
22.41% |
2.05% |
1.70% |
1.32% |
0.06% |
0.44% |
|
Consulting |
19.96% |
2.57% |
1.04% |
0.78% |
0.03% |
0.29% |
|
Creative Services/Agency |
23.01% |
2.95% |
1.19% |
0.93% |
0.04% |
0.35% |
|
Daily Deals/E-Coupons |
13.69% |
1.89% |
0.13% |
0.09% |
0.01% |
0.09% |
|
eCommerce |
16.87% |
2.60% |
0.34% |
0.27% |
0.03% |
0.21% |
|
Education and Training |
22.44% |
2.94% |
0.63% |
0.54% |
0.03% |
0.20% |
|
Entertainment and Events |
21.48% |
2.42% |
0.56% |
0.46% |
0.03% |
0.26% |
|
Gambling |
17.35% |
2.92% |
0.44% |
0.48% |
0.04% |
0.16% |
|
Games |
22.08% |
3.38% |
0.55% |
0.60% |
0.04% |
0.23% |
|
Government |
26.77% |
3.67% |
0.57% |
0.47% |
0.02% |
0.13% |
|
Health and Fitness |
23.23% |
3.06% |
0.52% |
0.51% |
0.04% |
0.37% |
|
Hobbies |
29.35% |
5.65% |
0.39% |
0.31% |
0.03% |
0.23% |
|
Home and Garden |
25.61% |
4.04% |
0.71% |
0.49% |
0.05% |
0.37% |
|
Insurance |
19.90% |
2.11% |
0.75% |
0.79% |
0.04% |
0.22% |
|
Legal |
22.30% |
2.90% |
0.79% |
0.66% |
0.03% |
0.21% |
|
Manufacturing |
23.25% |
2.64% |
1.56% |
1.06% |
0.04% |
0.36% |
|
Marketing and Advertising |
18.50% |
2.15% |
0.88% |
0.70% |
0.03% |
0.28% |
|
Media and Publishing |
22.60% |
4.69% |
0.33% |
0.21% |
0.01% |
0.12% |
|
Medical, Dental, and Healthcare |
22.87% |
2.67% |
0.82% |
0.81% |
0.05% |
0.29% |
|
Mobile |
21.28% |
2.48% |
0.76% |
0.73% |
0.04% |
0.39% |
|
Music and Musicians |
23.02% |
2.91% |
0.68% |
0.52% |
0.03% |
0.29% |
|
Non-Profit |
25.58% |
2.94% |
0.55% |
0.46% |
0.02% |
0.19% |
|
Other |
23.45% |
3.08% |
0.88% |
0.69% |
0.04% |
0.28% |
|
Pharmaceuticals |
19.67% |
2.68% |
0.82% |
0.71% |
0.03% |
0.22% |
|
Photo and Video |
26.49% |
3.84% |
0.81% |
0.69% |
0.04% |
0.40% |
|
Politics |
22.79% |
2.23% |
0.50% |
0.46% |
0.04% |
0.21% |
|
Professional Services |
21.11% |
2.73% |
1.00% |
0.77% |
0.03% |
0.31% |
|
Public Relations |
20.32% |
1.81% |
0.87% |
0.67% |
0.02% |
0.24% |
|
Real Estate |
22.03% |
2.20% |
0.76% |
0.64% |
0.05% |
0.33% |
|
Recruitment and Staffing |
20.57% |
2.53% |
0.64% |
0.64% |
0.03% |
0.31% |
|
Religion |
26.52% |
3.28% |
0.22% |
0.21% |
0.02% |
0.12% |
|
Restaurant |
23.54% |
1.48% |
0.37% |
0.29% |
0.03% |
0.30% |
|
Restaurant and Venue |
22.59% |
1.46% |
0.65% |
0.55% |
0.04% |
0.39% |
|
Retail |
22.06% |
2.82% |
0.44% |
0.37% |
0.03% |
0.28% |
|
Social Networks and Online Communities |
22.14% |
3.73% |
0.44% |
0.37% |
0.03% |
0.23% |
|
Software and Web App |
22.03% |
2.61% |
1.11% |
0.89% |
0.03% |
0.39% |
|
Sports |
26.13% |
3.61% |
0.58% |
0.50% |
0.03% |
0.27% |
|
Telecommunications |
20.76% |
2.31% |
1.19% |
0.94% |
0.03% |
0.27% |
|
Travel and Transportation |
20.80% |
2.43% |
0.74% |
0.53% |
0.03% |
0.24% |
|
Vitamin Supplements |
17.02% |
2.06% |
0.42% |
0.36% |
0.05% |
0.27% |
Read the full article, including statistics by company size, at http://mailchimp.com/resources/research/email-marketing-benchmarks.
Similarly, Silverpop did a study among their users and found the following:
Unique Open Rate: 21%
Click Rate: 3.2%
Hard Bounce Rate: 0.55%
Unsubscribe Rate: 0.13%
They also broke down their results by industry:
|
Industry |
Unique Open Rate |
Click Through Rate |
Hard Bounce Rate |
Complaint Rate |
Unsubscribe Rate |
|
Automobiles & Transportation |
24.0% |
2.8% |
0.82% |
0.04% |
0.07% |
|
Computer Hardware & Telecommunications |
25.7% |
5.7% |
0.98% |
0.01% |
0.11% |
|
Computer Software & Online Services |
21.5% |
3.2% |
0.59% |
0.02% |
0.13% |
|
Consumer Products |
27.3% |
5.4% |
0.54% |
0.04% |
0.18% |
|
Corporate Services |
23.7% |
3.4% |
0.76% |
0.02% |
0.18% |
|
Financial Services |
22.1% |
3.3% |
0.62% |
0.04% |
0.20% |
|
Food Service, Sports & Entertainment |
20.9% |
3.7% |
0.68% |
0.04% |
0.17% |
|
Hospitals, Healthcare & Biotech |
26.6% |
4.3% |
0.93% |
0.02% |
0.11% |
|
Industrial Manufacturing & Utilities |
25.2% |
3.4% |
1.29% |
0.03% |
0.19% |
|
Insurance |
28.7% |
4.2% |
0.89% |
0.02% |
0.14% |
|
Lodging, Travel Agencies & Services |
29.6% |
5.3% |
0.52% |
0.03% |
0.15% |
|
Marketing Agencies & Services |
25.1% |
4.0% |
1.09% |
0.04% |
0.22% |
|
Media & Publishing |
16.1% |
2.2% |
0.27% |
0.02% |
0.06% |
|
Nonprofits, Associations, and Government |
27.5% |
4.0% |
0.50% |
0.03% |
0.13% |
|
Real Estate, Construction & Building Products |
26.0% |
3.4% |
0.72% |
0.05% |
0.33% |
|
Retail & Ecommerce |
18.3% |
2.9% |
0.26% |
0.03% |
0.10% |
|
Schools & Education |
27.2% |
4.6% |
0.82% |
0.03% |
0.23% |
Read more about their study, including statistics by country and additional benchmarks, such as clicks per clicker and opens per opener at: http://www.silverpop.com/marketing-resources/white-papers/all/2015/email-metrics-benchmark-study-2015/.
Going Beyond “Traditional” Email Metrics
Clicks, Opens, Bounces, and Unsubscribes are really only one piece to the puzzle, though. If you only look at these benchmarks, you may be missing out on the full picture of how your company’s emails perform.
Closed-loop reporting takes emails one step further and tracks the outcome of your emails. For example, you might want to track:
- Offers downloaded / number of emails sent
- Number of MQLs / number of emails sent
- Number of SQLs / number of emails sent
- Number of opportunities / number of emails sent
- Number of sales / number of emails sent
- Dollars of sales / number of emails sent
Benchmarks for these types of numbers are much more difficult to find as many software solutions do not allow you to track marketing efforts all the way down the funnel. While it possible to calculate these by hand, that can be a time-consuming effort without metrics such as those provided by HubSpot.
One external benchmark from the above list is published by Experian Marketing Services quarterly, which is:
Average revenue per email: $0.08 in Q2 2015
Read the full report at: http://www.experian.com/marketing-services/email-benchmark-q2-2015.html
(For more email statistics especially useful for retailers, check out this article by MarketingLand, such as ROI and Cost Per Subscriber: http://marketingland.com/email-marketing-equals-dollar-signs-30168. Also see this article on calculating dollars per email address: http://marketingland.com/marketing-power-processes-tracking-email-to-the-dollars-64604)
For these types of closed-loop metrics that show the effectiveness of an email campaign (versus popularity alone), internal benchmarks will be the best gauge of success.
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And there’s your measuring stick. Good luck on your email efforts and never stop testing, experimenting, and trying new things! Create your own benchmarks and then surpass them! Your results are truly the only ones that really matter.
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About the author
Jessica Vionas-Singer was formerly the Senior Director of Client Success at SmartBug Media where she lead a team of SmartBugs who focus on HubSpot onboarding for clients new to the system and other project-based work, oversaw new employee onboarding, and rolled out new process and procedures within the Client Services department. She fell in love with marketing at her first job at a technology company specializing in credit evaluation software. Her background includes more than 20 years of marketing experience in content creation and lead-driving tactics, online presence and blog creation, social media engagement, budgeting and project plans, webinar and trade show event management, public relations, comprehensive promotional campaigns, and analytics. Jessica has a BS in Sociology from Montana State University – Bozeman. Read more articles by Jessica Vionas-Singer.
