Email Marketing Benchmarks 2026: Open, Click and Conversion Rates for Campaigns and Automations
Email marketing benchmarks, in short: newsletters and campaigns average roughly 31% to 43% opens and 1.7% to 3.8% clicks depending on the source, while automated emails do far better. GetResponse measured 83.63% opens and 16.60% clicks on welcome emails, and Klaviyo found flows click at 5.58% against 1.69% for campaigns. Opens are inflated by privacy features, so judge emails by clicks and sales.
A benchmark tells you whether a number is normal, not whether it is good enough for your business. This guide collects the published figures for campaigns, for each common automation (welcome, nurture, abandoned cart, win-back) and by industry, says how each source measured them, and explains which numbers to trust now that open tracking is unreliable.
Key takeaways
- Campaign averages: 43.46% opens and 2.09% clicks at MailerLite (2025); 31% and 1.69% at Klaviyo (2026).
- Welcome emails are the best-performing email most businesses send: 83.63% opens, 16.60% clicks at GetResponse.
- Automations punch above their weight: at Omnisend they were 2% of sends and 30% of email revenue in 2025.
- Abandoned cart emails click at 6% on average at Klaviyo, 11.3% for the top 10%.
- Unsubscribes average about 0.15% to 0.22% per campaign.
- Open rates are inflated by Apple Mail Privacy Protection; use clicks, replies and sales instead.
What is a good email open rate and click rate?
For regular campaigns and newsletters, an open rate in the 30s or low 40s and a click rate of 2% to 3% is typical. The table shows the overall averages from four large senders' data. They differ because the customers, years and definitions differ, so compare your numbers with one source, not a mix.
| Source (data period) | Open rate | Click rate | Unsubscribe rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| MailerLite (Dec 2024 to Nov 2025) | 43.46% | 2.09% | 0.22% |
| GetResponse (2023) | 39.64% | 3.25% | 0.15% |
| Mailchimp (data as of Dec 2023) | 35.63% | 2.62% | 0.22% |
| Klaviyo campaigns (2026 report) | 31% | 1.69% | Not given |
| Omnisend, all email (2025) | 30.7% | Not given | Not given |
GetResponse also reports a 2.33% bounce rate and a 0.01% spam complaint rate across its sample. Mailchimp's page shows a slightly different overall average in its own FAQ (34.23% opens, 2.66% clicks) from the one in its table; we quote the table.
Why can't you trust open rates any more?
Because many opens are not people. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection downloads email content in the background by default, whether or not the reader engages with it, which registers as an open. Klaviyo calls open rate “directional” for this reason. Use opens only to spot sudden drops (often a deliverability problem) and judge emails on clicks, replies, bookings and sales.
How do automated emails compare with campaigns?
Automated emails, sent when someone does something, perform several times better than scheduled campaigns, because they arrive when the reader is paying attention.
| Measure | Campaigns | Automated flows | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate, average | 31% | 32.2% | Klaviyo 2026 |
| Click rate, average | 1.69% | 5.58% | Klaviyo 2026 |
| Click rate, top 10% | 3.38% | 10.48% | Klaviyo 2026 |
| Placed order rate, average | 0.16% | 2.11% | Klaviyo 2026 |
| Revenue per email sent | $0.18 | $2.87 | Omnisend, 2025 |
| Share of sends / share of email revenue | — | 2% / 30% | Omnisend, 2025 |
Klaviyo and Omnisend serve mostly online stores, so the revenue figures describe ecommerce. The pattern, that a few automations outperform many campaigns, holds for service businesses too; see the automations to build first.
What are the benchmarks for each type of automated email?
| Email type | Open rate | Click rate | Other | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome email | 83.63% | 16.60% | — | GetResponse (2023) |
| Autoresponder (drip or nurture sequence) | 51.05% | 5.59% | — | GetResponse (2023) |
| Triggered email | 45.38% | 5.02% | — | GetResponse (2023) |
| Newsletter | 40.08% | 3.84% | — | GetResponse (2023) |
| Abandoned cart email | Not given | 6% (top 10%: 11.3%) | $6.77 revenue per recipient (top 10%: $13.70) | Klaviyo (2026 report) |
| Abandoned cart SMS | — | 10.3% (top 10%: 18.5%) | $4.48 revenue per recipient | Klaviyo (2026 report) |
| Win-back SMS | — | 2.72% to 6.36% | Conversion 0.20% to 0.89% | Postscript (2025, middle half of stores) |
Two patterns stand out. First, the closer an email is to the moment someone acted, the better it does: welcome emails beat nurture emails, which beat newsletters. Omnisend found abandoned cart and welcome emails together produced 76% of the orders from its customers' automations in 2025. Second, win-back messages convert least, because they go to people who have already drifted away; their value is in the customers who come back, not the rate.
To build the sequences behind these numbers, see the guides to the welcome email sequence, the lead nurturing sequence and the win-back campaign.
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What are email benchmarks by industry?
Open and click rates vary a lot by industry. These are from MailerLite's 2025 data, which covers 46 industries; the ones below are those most relevant to small service businesses.
| Industry | Open rate | Click rate |
|---|---|---|
| Coaching | 48.07% | 1.42% |
| Consulting | 45.96% | 2.41% |
| Insurance | 44.4% | 1.36% |
| Medical and dental | 43.75% | 2.25% |
| Business and finance | 43.34% | 2.37% |
| Legal | 42.58% | 4.9% |
| Real estate | 40.37% | 1.72% |
| Construction | 39.95% | 3.53% |
| Software | 39.31% | 1.15% |
| Marketing and advertising | 37.23% | 1.3% |
| Ecommerce | 32.67% | 1.07% |
| All industries | 43.46% | 2.09% |
A small list can swing several points from one email to the next. Compare each email with your own average over the last few months; that tells you more than any industry table.
Which email metrics should a small business track?
| Metric | Why it matters | Warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Click rate | Shows people acted on the email | Falling over several sends |
| Conversions (bookings, sales, replies) | The reason you send email | Clicks without conversions: check the page they land on |
| Unsubscribe rate | Shows whether people still want your emails | Well above your usual rate on one email |
| Spam complaint rate | Mailbox providers act on it | Approaching 0.1% |
| Bounce rate | Shows list quality | Above 2% |
| Open rate | Directional only | A sudden drop can signal a spam-folder problem |
Link tracking and segmentation make these numbers usable; our newsletter plan covers both. If you send cold email as well, its benchmarks are different; see cold email benchmarks.
What do you do if your emails are below benchmark?
Work through the problem in order, because each step depends on the one before it: an email that doesn't arrive can't be opened, and one that isn't opened can't be clicked.
| Symptom | Likely cause | What to try first |
|---|---|---|
| Opens fall suddenly across all emails | Mail is going to spam | Check SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and remove contacts who never engage |
| Opens normal, clicks low | The email doesn't give a reason to click | One link, one clear next step, placed early |
| Clicks normal, few sales or bookings | The page or offer after the click | Match the landing page to the email's promise |
| Unsubscribes high on one email | Frequency, tone or the wrong segment | Send it to a narrower segment or less often |
| Welcome emails below campaigns | The sign-up promise and email 1 don't match | Deliver exactly what the form promised, immediately |
Change one thing at a time and judge it over several sends, not one. On a list of a few hundred people, a difference of one or two clicks can look like a big change in rate.
How Scalry handles this
In Scalry, links in campaigns are tracked and events are recorded per recipient, so you can see who clicked, not just how many. Campaigns can target segments, and automated workflows (welcome, nurture, reminders, win-back) run from triggers such as a form submission, a tag or a booking, with a log for every run. Scalry has no abandoned-cart automation or store integration, so online shops that depend on cart recovery are better served by an ecommerce email tool. More guides are in the marketing automation and funnels hub.
Sources, checked on 26 October 2026: MailerLite email benchmarks (3.6 million campaigns, December 2024 to November 2025); GetResponse Email Marketing Benchmarks (4.4 billion messages sent in 2023); Mailchimp email marketing benchmarks (data as of December 2023); Klaviyo 2026 email benchmarks and abandoned cart benchmarks; Omnisend 2026 Ecommerce Marketing Report (2025 data); Postscript 2026 SMS benchmarks. Each source measures differently; compare within a source, not across them.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good email open rate in 2026?
For campaigns, roughly 30% to 45% depending on the source and industry: MailerLite's 2025 average was 43.46% and Klaviyo's campaign average 31%. Because privacy features inflate opens, compare your own trend rather than a single number.
What is a good email click rate?
About 2% to 3% for campaigns and newsletters. Automated emails do better: Klaviyo's flows averaged 5.58%, and GetResponse measured 16.60% on welcome emails.
What is the average welcome email open rate?
83.63% in GetResponse's benchmark data, with a 16.60% click rate, the highest of any email type it measured.
What is a normal unsubscribe rate?
About 0.15% to 0.22% per campaign: 0.22% at MailerLite and Mailchimp, 0.15% at GetResponse.
Why is my open rate so high?
Probably Apple Mail Privacy Protection, which loads emails in the background and registers opens whether or not anyone reads them. Use clicks and conversions to judge performance.
To track clicks per contact and run welcome and nurture flows, see Scalry's funnels and automation.
Pull your last three months of click and unsubscribe rates, compare them with one source above, and set up the welcome sequence first if you don't have one. You can rebuild one real campaign inside Scalry before moving anything else.
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