Email Marketing Benchmarks by Industry 2026 (US Small Business)

Updated October 2026 · Written by Adrian Prokopiec · 13 min read

Email marketing benchmarks for 2026 put the all-industry average open rate between 35.6% (Mailchimp, December 2023) and 42.5% (GetResponse, 2023 data), with click rates of 2.6% to 5.1% and unsubscribe rates of 0.14% to 0.22%. The spread is not an error. Each platform measures a different customer base in a different way, so 20 Minute Marketing shows every source side by side rather than picking one.

Most benchmark pages quote one number and move on. That number usually comes from a single email platform, measured on that platform’s customers, in a year the page does not mention. If your open rate is 28% and the page says the average is 42%, you feel like you are failing. If the next page says 21%, you feel like a genius. Neither feeling is useful.

This page collects the published benchmark tables from the platforms that actually own the data (Mailchimp, GetResponse, Campaign Monitor and Klaviyo), labels each with its data year and sample, and explains why they disagree. Every figure links to the page it came from. If you want the definitions first, the digital marketing glossary covers open rate, unsubscribe rate and deliverability in plain English.

What are the email marketing benchmarks by industry?

Two platforms publish a full industry breakdown that can be read in public: GetResponse (4.4 billion messages sent by its customers in calendar 2023, senders with at least 500 contacts) and Campaign Monitor (its 2021 sending data, published in its 2022 benchmarks guide). Where both cover the same industry, both rows are shown. The gap between them is the most useful thing on this page.

Sources: GetResponse Email Marketing Benchmarks (2023 sending data, published 2024) and Campaign Monitor Email Marketing Benchmarks (2021 sending data). GetResponse’s page also quotes an all-industry open rate of 39.64% in its FAQ against 42.53% in its own table, and does not explain the difference. Industry names have been aligned where the two reports use different labels; the figures are unchanged.

What is the average email open rate across all industries?

Four platforms publish an all-customer average in public. Put together, they tell you more than any one of them does alone.

Mailchimp’s public table lists only four industries plus the all-user row: non-profits 40.04% open and 3.27% click, education and training 35.64% and 3.02%, business and finance 31.35% and 2.78%, ecommerce 29.81% and 1.74%. Its FAQ adds that government emails had the highest open rate at 40.55% and vitamin supplements the lowest at 27.34%. Source: Mailchimp Email Marketing Benchmarks.

Klaviyo’s figures look low next to GetResponse until you notice the sample. Klaviyo is almost entirely ecommerce, and ecommerce lists are large, promotional and built from checkouts rather than relationships. That is the single biggest lesson in this table: the industry mix of the platform decides the “average” more than anything you do. If you send through Klaviyo, compare yourself to Klaviyo. For a wider view of how email sits alongside the other channels, the digital marketing statistics page collects the primary-source numbers.

Why do email benchmarks disagree so much?

A retailer is 17.1% in one report and 41.77% in another. Four things explain almost all of that gap.

• Apple Mail Privacy Protection: Campaign Monitor’s report says the feature, released with iOS 15 in September 2021, “effectively disables open rate tracking by pre-fetching (or downloading) an email and its images”, which registers an open whether or not a human looked. Its monthly data shows open rates stepping up on the beta and release dates. GetResponse says open rates “have become less reliable” since 2021 for the same reason, and Mailchimp carries a caveat that opens “may be impacted” by it. A 2021 dataset sits mostly before the inflation; a 2023 dataset sits entirely inside it. That alone explains a large part of the Campaign Monitor versus GetResponse gap.
• What counts as an open or a click: GetResponse counts “every subscriber action”, including reopens and clicks on more than one link. Mailchimp reports unique opens and clicks. Counting method alone can move a click rate by a factor of two.
• Who is in the sample: Mailchimp only includes campaigns sent to at least 1,000 subscribers. GetResponse only includes senders with at least 500 contacts. Campaign Monitor averages across all campaigns regardless of industry because “some industries send more email than others”. Klaviyo is ecommerce. None of these is a sample of US small businesses specifically.
• B2B versus B2C lists: The industries at the top of the GetResponse table (legal, technology, non-profit, financial services) send to people who opted in because they needed something. The industries at the bottom (travel, health and beauty, restaurants) send promotions to large consumer lists. The gap is about the list, not the subject line.

What does a good open rate look like for a US small business list under 5,000?

The honest answer is that none of the published benchmarks measure you. Mailchimp excludes campaigns under 1,000 recipients. GetResponse excludes senders under 500 contacts. Both still skew to lists far bigger than the one a plumber, a dental practice or a boutique actually has.

In the small lists I’ve managed, the pattern has been consistent for years. A list under 5,000 that was built from real customers and genuine opt-ins runs well above the all-industry average, because every address on it belongs to someone who has already bought or asked. A list the same size that was bought, scraped from a trade show, or left to sit for 18 months without a send runs well below it, and often sits in the 10% to 15% range by the time the owner asks me why email “doesn’t work for them”. Same size, same industry, three times the open rate. The difference is entirely how the list was built and how recently it was mailed.

So for a small list, use the benchmark table as a sanity check and your own history as the real benchmark. Three rules I apply:

• A move of more than five points in a month is a deliverability event, not a content event: a subject line does not swing a whole list by that much. Check your domain authentication and complaint rate before you rewrite anything. The email deliverability guide walks through the checks.
• Compare like with like: a monthly newsletter to the whole list and a two-email launch sequence to recent buyers will never have the same open rate. Benchmark each type of send against its own last six.
• Segment before you judge: a 28% open rate across the whole list is often a 55% rate on recent customers and a 9% rate on everyone else. Email segmentation shows you which, and the fix is different for each.

Want the whole system, from list building to the sequences that run on their own? The email and SMS marketing course for small business covers it in 18 lessons of 20 minutes each.

What are the ecommerce email benchmarks for 2026?

Klaviyo is the one platform with a 2026-dated page, and it adds a metric the others do not publish: placed-order rate, the share of recipients who bought. It splits every figure between campaigns (one-off sends) and flows (automated sequences such as welcome and abandoned cart).

Across all Klaviyo customers, campaigns averaged a 31% open rate and 1.69% click rate, flows 32.2% and 5.58%, and the top 10% of flows reached a 10.48% click rate. Klaviyo says flow revenue per recipient is “nearly 18x higher than campaigns”. Source: Klaviyo Email Marketing Benchmarks by Industry. That 18x figure is the clearest published case for building the three automated email sequences every business needs before spending another hour on a newsletter.

Which email metrics should you track instead of open rate?

Open rate still has a job: it is the fastest signal that something broke. It is just no longer a measure of interest, because a share of your “opens” are Apple’s servers. These four are harder to fake.

The formulas, with worked examples, are in the marketing formulas cheat sheet. If you want to move a click rate rather than just measure it, start with email A/B testing on the call to action, not the subject line; subject-line tests mostly move the metric Apple is already distorting.

How do you use these benchmarks in 20 minutes?

1. Export your last six sends (5 minutes): open rate, click rate, unsubscribes, delivered. Every platform has a campaign report; most let you download it as a CSV.
2. Find your two rows above (2 minutes): the GetResponse and Campaign Monitor figures for your industry are your range. If you sell online through Klaviyo, use the ecommerce table instead.
3. Compare click rate first, open rate second (5 minutes): if your clicks sit inside the range and your opens sit above it, you are fine and Apple is flattering you. If clicks sit below the range, the email body or the offer is the problem.
4. Check unsubscribes against 0.2% (3 minutes): above it on more than one send, you are mailing people who did not expect to hear from you. Fix the list before the content.
5. Write down your own baseline (5 minutes): the average of those six sends is now your benchmark. Beat it next month. Growing the list is the other lever, and growing an email list to 1,000 subscribers without ads covers how.

Changelog

• 26 October 2026: First published. Sources: Mailchimp (data as of December 2023), GetResponse (2023 sending data), Campaign Monitor (2021 sending data), Klaviyo (page published January 2026, updated September 2026). Constant Contact’s industry table could not be retrieved and is not included. This page is re-checked when any of the four publishes a new report.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good email open rate in 2026?

Published all-industry averages range from 21.5% (Campaign Monitor, 2021 data) to 42.53% (GetResponse, 2023 data), with Mailchimp at 35.63% as of December 2023. Anything inside that range is normal. Because Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates opens, treat open rate as a stability check and judge performance on click rate instead.

What is a good email click rate?

All-industry click rates in the published reports run from 2.3% (Campaign Monitor) and 2.62% (Mailchimp) to 5.14% (GetResponse, which counts repeat clicks). Klaviyo’s ecommerce campaigns average 1.69%, while its automated flows average 5.58%. A small business list of real customers should sit at or above the figure for its industry.

What is the average unsubscribe rate for email marketing?

Between 0.1% and 0.22% per send across Campaign Monitor, GetResponse and Mailchimp. GetResponse also reports an average spam complaint rate of 0.01%. If your unsubscribe rate is above 0.2% on more than one send, the list contains people who did not expect your email, and fixing the list matters more than fixing the content.

Are email open rates still accurate?

Not as a measure of human interest. Campaign Monitor’s report states that Apple Mail Privacy Protection, released in September 2021, pre-fetches emails and their images, which registers an open whether or not the recipient looked. GetResponse and Mailchimp both carry the same caveat. Open rate still works as a quick signal that deliverability has changed.

Which industry has the highest email open rate?

It depends on the report. GetResponse’s 2023 data puts non-profits highest at 54.54%, followed by arts and entertainment at 51.19% and legal services at 47.26%. Mailchimp’s FAQ names government at 40.55%. Campaign Monitor’s 2021 data puts education highest at 28.5%. Non-profits and education appear near the top in every report.

Related: Best email marketing platform for US small business: an honest comparison

Ready to beat your own benchmark? take the Email & SMS Marketing Course.