Email Marketing Open Rate Metrics & Tips

Updated March 1, 2025

Email marketing can provide a relatively steady drip to your sales funnel, but it hinges on your ability to understand and adapt to campaign metrics. Statistics such as open rate, click rate, unsubscribe rate and more can provide deep, useful insight into what customers on your email marketing list are actually looking for. By digging into your email campaign data, you can better nurture leads that will ultimately become a paying client.

Typical Email Marketing Click Rates

But digging into email marketing metrics can be discouraging. It doesn’t need to be. According to MailChimp, the average open rate for an email campaign is less than 35 percent and varies by industry. Click rates are also important because they reflect how many readers took action from your email. However, typical click rates are less than 10 percent.

Low open and click rates indicate that the customers are not being sufficiently interested by the headline and content of the email campaign. Making changes and testing a variety of approaches can help you identify what is most interesting and relevant to the recipients on your email campaign list. Here are four tips to help boost your open and click rates:

A Personal Touch

Often, email campaigns can have a cold, industrial feel that alienates readers. Start off by being friendly. Try sending the emails that include a personal name with your business email address. Test which email address get opened more often.

Creativity Creates Interest

Subject lines provide another valuable opportunity to catch your reader’s attention and motivate them to participate in your email campaign. Common subject line mistakes include using general phrases, improper capitalization or using the same subject line repeatedly. Don’t just call your campaign “Company Newsletter.” Use inventive approaches to specify the content of the email. For example, you may use the subject line to pose a question that is answered in the content of the email.

Timing is Everything

Sending the email at the proper time can also increase the likelihood that it will reach its intended destination. Although you should test different days of the week and  times to find what is ideal for your audience, many email marketers have found success by sending emails to customers in the afternoon or to business contacts in the morning. Others have found surprising results by sending email notices on Saturdays, as in-boxes are less cluttered or recipients have more time to scan and respond.

Even if your email campaign statistics are reasonably high, improving your email campaigns can improve your sales bottom-line. The key is understanding your metrics and your audience.

What’s your open rate? What have you done to inch up those stats?