Email Marketing Benchmarks by Industry | 60 Second Marketer

Update: Email Marketing Benchmarks

A member of the 60 Second Marketer community asked a terrific question the other day.

Here’s the question as it was emailed to me:

“I just wanted to be sure what was being said on the Email Marketing Benchmarks by Industry posting.

In that article there is a data table where two of the columns are headed Open Rate (OR) and Click-Through Rate (CTR).

What is meant by the OR is obvious. I’m not confident what the CTR is in this instance as I have seen it described in two different ways.

Elsewhere I have seen the CTR calculated as a percentage of the total emails sent. The alternative calculation is that the CTR is a percentage of all of those emails that were opened.

The difference in the actual numbers is significant. Take the Art Gallery results where OR = 22% and CTR = 11% – a high percentage given the information in your 60 second video.

If the first method of calculation is used then with total emails of (say) 100 then 22 people opened their emails and 11 of them clicked-through after reading their email.

Using the second method, again with total emails of (say) 100, then 22 people opened their emails. If 11% of them then clicked-through then the actual number who did so = 2.4 people.

11 people vs 2.4 people, which one?“

First and foremost, I’d like to thank Terry for asking this question. It’s a great question and I’m more than happy to clear it up.

According to ConstantContact, the email click-through rate is the percentage of click-throughs for a particular email based on the number of contacts who actually opened the email. A common click-through rate is around 4% of those emails opened. The click-through distribution total is merely the total of all clicks for that campaign – which is always 100%.

Email click-through rates vary widely based on industry, email content, contact list quality, timing and many other factors. The email industry overall reports average click through rates around 6% of emails opened. Constant Contact customers see average click through rates ranging from 7% to 27%

So, in the example Terry provided above, the actual CTR for the art gallery example would be 2.4 people.

Thanks again for asking the question, Terry. Part of what makes the 60 Second Marketer community work is that people like you ask terrific questions.

Posted by Jamie Turner, the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine of BKV Digital and Direct Response.