Email marketing benchmarks by industry
Email benchmarks by industry for campaigns and automated flows: open rate, click rate, click-to-open, unsubscribe rate and placed-order rate, with samples and caveats.
The split that matters in email is not industry, it is campaigns against flows. Across 205,000 ecommerce brands, one-off campaigns place orders on 0.16% of sends while triggered flows place them on 2.11% — roughly thirteen times the rate, from about a twentieth of the volume.
Open rate is on these tables because publishers print it, but treat it as the weakest column. Apple Mail Privacy Protection opens messages on the recipient's behalf, so any open rate after 2021 counts opens that never happened. Click and order rates are unaffected.
The third table covers all senders rather than ecommerce, which is why its open rates run roughly eight points higher and its industries include legal services and non-profits. It is 2023 data — the broadest industry breakdown available, and dated.
Ecommerce email — campaigns
Who is in this sample: 205,000+ ecommerce brands sending one-off campaigns
| Industry | Open | Click | Order |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clothing & accessories | 33.1% | 1.83% | 0.12% |
| Automotive | 29.4% | 1.83% | 0.11% |
| Electronics | 29.3% | 1.85% | 0.09% |
| Food & beverage | 31.2% | 1.7% | 0.26% |
| Hardware & home improvement | 30.9% | 1.84% | 0.11% |
| Health & beauty | 30.5% | 1.24% | 0.19% |
| Home & garden | 32.5% | 1.78% | 0.13% |
| Jewellery | 32.5% | 1.6% | 0.08% |
| Mass merchant | 28.7% | 1.77% | 0.14% |
| Office supplies | 28.9% | 1.88% | 0.14% |
| Specialty | 32% | 1.65% | 0.18% |
| Sporting goods | 31.9% | 1.88% | 0.11% |
| Toys & hobbies | 31.7% | 2.03% | 0.19% |
| All industries · publisher's own figure | 31% | 1.69% | 0.16% |
Industry names are reproduced in the publisher's own wording.
Source
- Publisher
- Klaviyo
- Data period
- Published February 2026; exact window not stated
- Sample
- Over 205,000 brands
- Geography
- Not stated
- Statistic
- Figures are averages
Notes on this table
- Ecommerce senders only.
- Open rates are inflated by Apple Mail Privacy Protection, which opens messages on the recipient's behalf — the publisher states this explicitly.
- Klaviyo quotes different sample sizes on different pages (205,000 / 183,000 / 110,000 brands); the figure here is the one printed with this table.
- The publisher's top-decile campaign reaches 45.1% open, 3.38% click and 0.36% placed-order rate.
- Open rate is the least trustworthy number on this table: Apple Mail Privacy Protection registers opens the recipient never made.
Ecommerce email — automated flows
Who is in this sample: 205,000+ ecommerce brands; triggered flows rather than campaigns
| Industry | Open | Click | Order |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clothing & accessories | 34.4% | 5.54% | 2.15% |
| Automotive | 30.2% | 5.45% | 1.94% |
| Electronics | 30.3% | 6.11% | 1.95% |
| Food & beverage | 33% | 5.8% | 2.46% |
| Hardware & home improvement | 31.7% | 5.65% | 2.07% |
| Health & beauty | 30.5% | 4.8% | 1.96% |
| Home & garden | 34.2% | 5.96% | 2.12% |
| Jewellery | 32.8% | 5.42% | 1.85% |
| Mass merchant | 29.7% | 5.55% | 1.95% |
| Office supplies | 28.8% | 5.81% | 2.18% |
| Specialty | 30.7% | 5.47% | 2.06% |
| Sporting goods | 33.3% | 6.13% | 2.13% |
| Toys & hobbies | 31.8% | 5.96% | 2.14% |
| All industries · publisher's own figure | 32.2% | 5.58% | 2.11% |
Industry names are reproduced in the publisher's own wording.
Source
- Publisher
- Klaviyo
- Data period
- Published February 2026; exact window not stated
- Sample
- Over 205,000 brands
- Geography
- Not stated
- Statistic
- Figures are averages
Notes on this table
- Ecommerce senders only.
- Open rates are inflated by Apple Mail Privacy Protection, which opens messages on the recipient's behalf — the publisher states this explicitly.
- Klaviyo quotes different sample sizes on different pages (205,000 / 183,000 / 110,000 brands); the figure here is the one printed with this table.
- Flows convert at roughly 13× the placed-order rate of campaigns on the publisher's own comparison, from 5.3% of sends.
- Abandoned-cart flows sit far above this table — the publisher's separate 2023 analysis of 143,000 such flows reports 50.5% open, 6.25% click and 3.33% placed-order on an average brand.
Email by industry — all sendersDated
Who is in this sample: 4.4 billion messages from senders with 500+ contacts, calendar 2023
| Industry | Open | Click | CTOR | Unsub |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Communications | 65.14% | 8.66% | 13.29% | 0.09% |
| Non-Profits | 54.54% | 6.7% | 12.29% | 0.11% |
| Arts & Entertainment | 51.19% | 4.16% | 8.13% | 0.19% |
| Legal Services | 47.26% | 12.11% | 25.63% | 0.17% |
| Technology & High Tech | 44.72% | 7.4% | 16.54% | 0.15% |
| Health Care | 43.95% | 3.08% | 7.01% | 0.21% |
| Real Estate | 42.71% | 3.51% | 8.23% | 0.17% |
| Retail | 41.77% | 5.1% | 12.22% | 0.13% |
| Education | 41.33% | 3.17% | 7.68% | 0.17% |
| Publishing | 39.89% | 5.76% | 14.43% | 0.11% |
| Automotive | 39.69% | 5.76% | 14.51% | 0.12% |
| Agencies | 39.26% | 4.69% | 11.96% | 0.18% |
| Restaurants & Food | 38.52% | 2.44% | 6.33% | 0.17% |
| Health & Beauty | 38.16% | 2.14% | 5.62% | 0.12% |
| Sports & Activities | 37.28% | 6.87% | 18.43% | 0.15% |
| Financial Services | 34.7% | 5.34% | 15.4% | 0.08% |
| Travel | 32.83% | 2.52% | 7.69% | 0.09% |
| Internet Marketing | 32.62% | 3.18% | 9.74% | 0.16% |
| All industries · publisher's own figure | 39.64% | 3.25% | 8.62% | 0.15% |
Industry names are reproduced in the publisher's own wording.
Source
- Publisher
- GetResponse
- Data period
- Calendar 2023
- Sample
- More than 4.4 billion messages from senders with 500+ contacts
- Geography
- Global
- Statistic
- Figures are averages
Notes on this table
- Open rates are inflated by Apple Mail Privacy Protection auto-opens; the publisher attributes part of the year-on-year rise to it.
- 2023 data — the broadest industry breakdown available, but not current.
- Open rates in this dataset run about 8 points above the ecommerce-only Klaviyo table. Different sender mix, different list hygiene, and a different year — not a disagreement to resolve.
- 2023 data.
How to use these numbers
A benchmark is a description of someone else's sample, not a target. The number worth hitting is your own break-even: the cost per acquisition your margin allows, or the return on ad spend that leaves a profit after the product is paid for. Use the calculators to work that out first, then use the benchmark to ask whether the market is even priced for it.
When your number sits far from the table, check the sample before checking your account. A store compared with a lead-generation sample, or a brand-heavy account compared with broad prospecting, will look broken while being perfectly healthy. The universe line above each table is there for exactly that check.
Calculators for these metrics
Frequently asked questions
- What is a good email click rate?
- For ecommerce campaigns the average is 1.69% and the top decile 3.38%; for automated flows the average is 5.58% and the top decile 10.48%. Comparing a welcome flow with a weekly campaign tells you nothing.
- Should I still track open rate?
- As a relative signal within your own sends, yes — a sudden drop still means something. As an absolute benchmark against other senders, no: Apple's privacy feature inflates it by an amount that varies with your audience's device mix.
- Which flow performs best?
- Abandoned cart, by a distance. A separate analysis of 143,000 such flows reports 50.5% open, 6.25% click and a 3.33% placed-order rate for an average brand, against 2.11% across all flows.
How this data is handled
- Every figure is transcribed from a public report and carries its publisher, sample, data period and a link. Nothing is estimated or rounded to “about”.
- Publishers are never blended. A click-through rate from one report and a CPM from another never appear in the same row.
- Each table states who is in its sample, because advertiser mix — not disagreement — explains most of the spread between reports.
- Publisher errors and dated datasets are footnoted rather than quietly corrected or refreshed from another source.