Email Open Rates — Eastwood Marketing

Wondering how your email open rates compare to other businesses?

Using data from their nearly 750,000 customers, Constant Contact released stats for tracked open rates, click-through rates, bounces and unsubscribes across more than 35 different market segments (May 2017). They’ve been tracking this data for several years now and release it to their partners and knowledgebase throughout the year.

In May 2017 the average email open rate across 35 industries was 16.85%.

Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash — Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash

The Top 5 Email Open Rates by Industry (May 2017)

Religious Organizations – 27.3% Open Rate
Education (Primary/Secondary – 24.27% Open Rate
Government Agency or Services – 23.22% Open Rate
Child Care Services – 22.7% Open Rate
Health and Social Services – 21.94% Open Rate

Not surprisingly, the businesses or organizations with the highest open rates primarily provide notifications that offer critical and timely information. You won’t find many solicitations or promotions from a government agency. Not surprisingly, these organizations traditionally have the highest click-through rates and the lowest unsubscribe rates.

As we dive a bit deeper, we see professional services and retail business numbers.

Accounting firms have a high email open rate (19.53%), typically due to the nature of the communication. Most commonly, the highest click-through rates are around how-to articles and financial information related to their business. But remember, it’s all about the subject line; you have 2 seconds and 4-5 words to grab a reader’s attention.

After Accounting, ranks Higher Education 18.73%), then Personal Services (photography, housekeeping, dry cleaning) (17.62%), Real Estate (17.5%), Fitness and Recreation (17.3%) and Health Professionals (17.29%).

Industries with Low Email Open Rates

The Constant Contact May Email Open Rate data shows that Personal Trainers/Coaches are at the bottom of the list with an average of just 7.58% open rate. Interestingly, this segment also has a very low bounce rate. Why? It could be because of the personal nature of the business, where verbal communication and face-to-face interaction is occurring on a scheduled and regular basis.

Rounding out the bottom three industries with the lowest email open rates ranks Technology (10.02%) as well as Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations (10.68%).

How to Improve Your Email Open Rates

High open rates are all about relevance and timing. Relevance is key and in order to do this you need to know your customer. One of the best ways to do that is to segment your email list from the start, so rather than sending one email to everyone, send targeted emails with more relevant content to groups or lists. When you try and speak to everyone, you end up speaking to no one.

Keep in mind the mobile nature of your customers. Many are on the go and use their phones as the primary way to read emails. Be sure your emails are formatted correctly so they can be read easily on smartphones and tablets.

Finally, keep your email brief and to the point. Consumers don’t read, they scan, so your subject line and the layout of the words are critical. Use bullets and bunched words to create interesting phrases with links to deeper information.

While open rates are important, clicks can tell us more about interest and allow for dynamic segmenting. An open rate could be interpreted that the email recipient may be willing to engage with you. A click through shows that they are interested in something particular that you said. Pay close attention to this. Active listening is key to building a strong relationship with your audience.