"Is our open rate good or bad?" is one of the first things you wonder about once your newsletter is up and running. This article looks at the averages that email providers publish, then explains how to read those numbers sensibly.
Published average open rates
Email providers calculate open rates from their own customers' sends and publish the results. Two widely cited figures:
| Source | Based on | Average open rate | Average click rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Benchmark Email (2026 report) | About 68,000 users worldwide | 25.54% | 1.45% |
| Mailchimp (updated December 2023) | Campaigns sent to 1,000+ subscribers | 35.63% | 2.62% |
In short: open rates tend to land somewhere around 25–35%, and click rates around 1–3%. Results vary by industry, and even the same provider's figures shift from year to year.
Open rates look better than they really are
There's an important catch with open rates.
An "open" is counted when a tiny image inside the email loads. Apple Mail, however, has a feature called Mail Privacy Protection. When it's turned on, images and other content are loaded in the background when the email arrives, not when the reader opens it. As a result, emails that were never actually read can still be counted as opened.
Mailchimp flags this on its own benchmarks page, noting that open rate accuracy may be affected by Apple's privacy changes and Mail Privacy Protection.
It works the other way too: people who block images can read your email without it ever registering as an open. The safest approach is to treat open rates as a rough guide, not an exact count.
Look at clicks before opens
If open rates can't be trusted, what should you watch? We suggest this order:
- Clicks. Someone who clicks a link has definitely read the email. Seeing which articles get clicked tells you what your readers care about.
- Replies and enquiries. Did the newsletter lead to someone getting in touch? For your business, this is the number that matters most.
- Unsubscribes. If unsubscribes suddenly jump after one issue, it's a sign the content or frequency has drifted from what readers expected.
- Open rate. Use it to spot trends against your own past issues. There's no need to worry about how you compare with other companies' averages.
When your open rate suddenly drops
If your open rate falls well below its usual level, check whether your emails are landing in spam before you start rethinking the content. Emails that end up in the spam folder are hardly ever opened.
- Is your sending domain authenticated with SPF, DKIM and DMARC?
- Have spam complaints gone up?
- Are you still sending to addresses that bounce?
Gmail's sender guidelines ask senders to keep their spam complaint rate below 0.3%.
How Newsletter Ready helps
On Newsletter Ready's Analytics page, you can compare open and click rates issue by issue on a chart, see which articles got the most clicks, and find your most engaged readers as well as those who've stopped opening. Press "Ask AI" and the AI looks at your actual numbers and writes 3–4 lines of advice for your next issue. Because open rates run high, its advice puts more weight on click rates.
Addresses that bounce or report spam are suppressed automatically, so you don't keep sending to people you can't reach and damage your sender reputation.