Analytics
Email benchmarks by industry: how to read open, click and unsubscribe rates in 2026
17 December 2025 · 8 min read
Benchmark tables are useful for sanity checks and dangerous for target setting. Every published range aggregates different senders, list qualities and definitions — and since Apple introduced Mail Privacy Protection in 2021, open rates across the industry have been inflated by automatic image prefetching.
Here is how to use the published ranges honestly, and which metrics survived the change intact.
Typical ranges from published benchmark reports
The figures below are the commonly reported ranges across the Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor and HubSpot benchmark studies. Treat them as orientation, not objectives.
| Sector | Open rate | Click-through rate | Unsubscribe rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retail and e-commerce | 25–35% | 1.5–3.0% | 0.10–0.25% |
| Software and SaaS | 28–38% | 2.0–3.5% | 0.15–0.30% |
| Property and real estate | 30–40% | 1.8–3.0% | 0.10–0.20% |
| Healthcare | 32–42% | 2.5–4.0% | 0.08–0.18% |
| Financial services | 30–40% | 2.0–3.5% | 0.10–0.20% |
| Hospitality and restaurants | 28–38% | 1.2–2.5% | 0.15–0.30% |
| Non-profit | 35–45% | 2.5–4.5% | 0.08–0.15% |
Why the open rate is no longer a clean signal
Mail Privacy Protection prefetches remote images for Apple Mail users who enable it, which registers an open whether or not the message was read. Because Apple Mail accounts for a large share of consumer email opens, this inflates reported open rates and compresses the difference between good and bad campaigns.
Open rate is still worth tracking as a trend on a stable audience. It is no longer defensible as a primary success metric or as the basis of a suppression rule.
The metrics that still mean what they say
- Click-through rate, and click-to-open on the same segment over time.
- Conversion rate against the campaign's actual goal, measured on your own site.
- Complaint rate from Postmaster Tools — the number mailbox providers act on.
- Hard bounce rate, which reads list quality directly.
- List growth net of unsubscribes and bounces.
Benchmark against yourself first
The only genuinely comparable sender is your own programme last quarter, on the same segment, with the same send cadence. Build that baseline before comparing against any published table, and segment it — a re-engagement send and a transactional confirmation have nothing useful to say to each other.
Key takeaways
- Use industry ranges as a sanity check, never as a target.
- Open rates have been inflated since 2021 by automatic image prefetching.
- Clicks, conversions, complaints and bounces are the durable metrics.
- Your own quarter-on-quarter figures are the benchmark that matters.
Sources
Put this into practice with HTsend
Everything in this guide is built into the platform: authenticate a sending domain, clean your list before you send, and watch inbox placement in real time.
