Email Marketing Scorecard

The ecommerce benchmark is 32.67% according to MailerLite's 2025 data across 3.6M campaigns. Above 35% is good — you're beating most online stores. Above 40% is strong. Ecommerce sits at the bottom of the open rate table because lists are large, send frequency is high, and subscribers are less self-selected than passion-driven categories like non-profits (52.38%) or hobbies (53.25%).

The cross-industry average click rate is 2.0-2.5%. But the range is enormous: Legal tops the table at 4.90%, manufacturing hits 4.22%, and media & publishing reaches 4.10%. Ecommerce (1.07%), beauty (0.95%), and restaurants (1.06%) sit at the bottom. Always compare against your own industry, not the overall average.

Compare your metrics against your industry's benchmarks, then focus on click rate — not open rate. Open rates are inflated by Apple Mail Privacy Protection (roughly 64% of Apple Mail users). Click rate tells you whether people actually engage with your content. If your click rate is above your industry average, your emails are working regardless of what your open rate says.

Under 0.3% is normal across most industries. The lowest is Religion & Spirituality at 0.08%; the highest is Restaurants at 0.39%. Above 0.5% per send needs immediate attention — it typically signals send frequency is too high, content doesn't match what subscribers signed up for, or list quality has degraded. A single send hitting 1%+ unsubscribes can damage your sender reputation.

It depends entirely on your industry. Non-profits average 52.38% — a 40% open rate would be underperforming. Ecommerce averages 32.67% — that same 40% would be excellent. SaaS averages 39.31%, education 45.10%, health & fitness 47.81%. Find your industry in the scorecard and compare directly. Also note that open rates are inflated by Apple MPP, so click rate is the more reliable engagement signal.

Four things move click rates more than anything else: (1) Segment your list — Mailchimp's own data shows segmented campaigns get 100.95% higher click rates (Mailchimp, 2014). (2) Use a single, clear CTA per email instead of multiple links competing for attention. (3) Send relevant content based on subscriber behaviour, not just demographics. (4) Optimise for mobile — over 60% of email opens happen on mobile devices, and tiny buttons kill click rates.

CTOR (click-to-open rate) measures clicks as a percentage of opens, not total recipients. If 1,000 people open your email and 80 click, your CTOR is 8%. It matters because it isolates content quality from deliverability and subject line performance. A high open rate with a low CTOR means your subject lines are good but your email body isn't delivering. Manufacturing has the highest CTOR at 14.82%; financial services has the lowest at 3.19%.

Based on EmailToolTester's multi-round independent testing: ActiveCampaign leads at 94.2%, followed by MailerLite at 89.8% and GetResponse at 90.9%. Mailchimp measured 89.3% in EmailToolTester's January 2024 round (the last percentage-based test). But platform choice sets the floor — list hygiene, authentication (SPF/DKIM/DMARC), and sending practices determine the ceiling. A clean list on Mailchimp can outdeliver a dirty list on ActiveCampaign.

Only if deliverability is genuinely the bottleneck. Platform choice sets the floor for inbox placement, but list hygiene, content quality, and segmentation determine whether people engage. If your open rate is below 25% across the board, switching to a higher-deliverability platform (ActiveCampaign at 94.2%, MailerLite at 89.8%) might help. If your open rate is fine but click rate is low, the problem is your content, not your platform.

There's no universal answer, but the data points to 1-4 times per week for most industries. Ecommerce brands sending 2-3x per week typically see the best balance of engagement and revenue. Non-profits and creators can often send weekly without fatigue. The warning sign is your unsubscribe rate: if it's climbing above 0.3% per send, you're sending too often or the content isn't matching subscriber expectations. Test your own frequency and let the data decide.