Email Marketing Benchmarks You Should Know in 2026

60% of consumers consider email their favorite way to hear from brands. That makes email one of the most reliable marketing channels today.

But you need to understand how they perform. In this guide, we’ll break down key email marketing benchmarks to help you see what good results actually look like and how to measure your own performance.
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More businesses are starting to work more deeply on their communication strategies with users—using more advanced segmentation and personalization, and involving AI to generate content based on user data, behavior, and preferences. As a result, channel performance is improving, while time and resources are being optimized and freed up for testing new tools.

- Vlad Loboda, Team Lead of the Retention Marketing department at Promodo

Email Open Rate

Email marketing open rate benchmarks vary widely by industry, region, and even message type. For example, in e-commerce, campaigns average around 28%, while top-performing ones reach 42.1%. Automated flows perform slightly better: average open rate of 30.5% and top results up to 44.7% (Klaviyo).

According to the Dotdigital 2026 report, email open rates are growing globally YoY, even as brands continue to send more emails.

The average open rate reached 55.4%, up 6.5% YoY. The unique open rate sits at 37.3% (+7.2% YoY).

People are opening emails more often, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re engaging with them. It mostly shows that your subject line and send time work well.

Some statistics by region:

Source: Dotdigital

And here’s how email open rates compare across key markets, according to the same report:
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The time of the year also impacts what the “normal” open rate looks like. According to Benchmark Email, open rates tend to peak at the end of the year, during the holiday season.
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Open rate is still a useful metric, but it’s no longer that informative on its own. For example, Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection prevents senders from tracking user activity. That’s why you should analyze open rates alongside other metrics such as clicks and conversions.

Email Marketing Click Through Rate Benchmarks

Users are scanning emails more, but clicking more selectively. The Dotdigital report shows:

CTR: 3.7% (+12.1% YoY)

Unique CTR: 1.4% (−1.6% YoY)

By market, the numbers look like this:
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Source: Dotdigital

Click rates in eCommerce, according to Kalviyo, show a bigger difference between email types.

Campaigns average around 1.8% CTR, with top performers reaching 3.58%. Automated flows perform better, with an average of 5.83% and top results up to 11.29%.

According to Salesforce, a “good” CTR for email campaigns usually falls between 2% and 5%, but it still depends on your industry, audience, and email type.

Promotional emails tend to perform a bit lower, often in the 1%–3% range. Transactional emails can exceed 5% because they contain information people are already expecting.

The main idea: compare CTR with your past results and consider the types of emails you send because benchmarks can vary widely depending on context.
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A Promodo case study shows that adding gamification to emails can significantly increase CTR. See how we used an interactive format instead of a standard promotional email, resulting in higher engagement and more clicks.
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Increasing CTR Through Email Gamification

Email Marketing Case Study

Read

CTOR (click-to-open rate)

Even though more people open emails and the total number of clicks is going up, clicks aren’t growing as fast as opens. So, a smaller percentage of people who open the email actually click on something.

CTOR according to Dotdigital is: 3.7% (−8.3% YoY)

Salesforce suggests that a strong CTOR is usually above 20%, but this benchmark is not universal and depends on your business and email type.

For example, general marketing emails typically fall between 10% and 25%, promotional ones are lower at 5%–15%. Content-heavy emails often perform better (20%–30%), and transactional emails can exceed 30% because people are more likely to engage with important information.
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Source: Salesforce

Click-to-open rate by market (Dotdigital data):
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How to Set Your Own Benchmarks?

You can define your own benchmarks only over time.

If you’re just starting with email campaigns, it’s better to rely on average metrics in your niche and look at competitors.

Once your email campaigns have been running for 6 months, a year, or longer, you can start defining your own benchmarks based on the condition and activity of your audience, as well as specific factors like your product, market, and even audience mindset.

Need help with an email marketing campaign? Promodo team can help you with that.
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Opens without clicks? Clicks without conversions?

Promodo email marketing experts will help you fix the gaps!

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