How to find and interpret 2018 email open rate benchmarks, especially for Gmail?

Key findings

• General benchmarks: Across industries, average email open rates in 2018 typically ranged between 15% and 25%, with variations depending on sector, audience, and email type.
• Gmail specifics: Gmail's open rates are often influenced by its sophisticated filtering algorithms and user engagement metrics, which prioritize inbox placement based on sender reputation and recipient interaction. This means generalized benchmarks may not directly reflect Gmail performance.
• Data limitations: Many public benchmark reports aggregate data across all internet service providers (ISPs) and do not always break down performance by individual providers like Gmail.
• Impact of engagement: Open rates are highly sensitive to email list hygiene, sender reputation, and personalization efforts. Senders with cleaner lists and more relevant content typically see higher engagement.

Key considerations

• Contextual analysis: When reviewing 2018 data, consider external factors like GDPR implementation, which began in May 2018, potentially impacting list sizes and engagement from previous consent practices. For more on this, see how GDPR affected deliverability trends.
• Specific date ranges: Finding benchmarks for a precise month like April 2018 is challenging. Most reports offer quarterly or annual averages rather than monthly breakdowns.
• Industry nuances: Different industries have vastly different acceptable open rates. A 15% open rate might be excellent in one sector and poor in another. General benchmarks from sources like Mailchimp's email marketing benchmarks can provide a starting point.
• Internal vs. external benchmarks: Prioritize your own historical performance as a primary benchmark. Year-over-year or month-over-month comparisons of your own Gmail-specific data will offer the most relevant insights into trends and changes. To understand how Gmail tracks engagement, review how Gmail tracks email engagement.

Key opinions

• Need for specific data: Marketers frequently express a need for granular open rate data, such as per-ISP or per-month, to diagnose specific performance changes, as highlighted by a user seeking April 2018 Gmail rates.
• Data normalization challenges: Many marketers acknowledge that comparing open rates across diverse senders is problematic due to differing data hygiene practices and list compositions.
• Industry comparison skepticism: There's a healthy skepticism about generalized industry benchmarks, particularly when they present comparisons across verticals without adequately accounting for unique sending behaviors.
• Focus on personal trends: A common sentiment is that a marketer's own historical performance is the most reliable benchmark for their specific program.

Key considerations

• Data sourcing: Marketers should leverage their ESP's reporting for their own open rate data, as well as broader reports for context, like the MailPoet benchmark data.
• Beyond the open: While important, open rates are just one metric. Marketers should also consider click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates for a holistic view of campaign success. Learn more about how to increase your email click-through rate.
• Identifying artificial opens: With the rise of privacy features and spam filter pre-fetching, actual human opens can be obscured. Marketers need to be aware of how to identify artificial email opens and clicks to interpret their data accurately.
• Industry trends: Even with caveats, understanding general industry trends, such as those covered by GetResponse's benchmarks, can provide useful context for broader strategy.

Key opinions

• Normalization difficulties: Experts highlight that normalizing open rate data for hygiene practices is a significant challenge, making direct comparisons between different senders or industries less reliable. Aggregated data may not accurately reflect diverse sending universes.
• Variability of results: There's a strong consensus that open rates vary widely due to different email approaches, making it tricky to quote universal industry statistics without careful consideration.
• Beyond the numbers: Some experts suggest that simply achieving high numbers might not always indicate true success, especially if it's due to aggressive list hygiene that removes unengaged subscribers, making the remaining list appear artificially engaged.
• Industry comparison pitfalls: Comparisons across industries can be misleading if the underlying data is not properly normalized for factors like mailing list practices, potentially misrepresenting which verticals genuinely achieve the best engagement.

Key considerations

• Holistic view: Rather than fixating on a single metric, deliverability experts advocate for a comprehensive analysis of engagement, including clicks, conversions, and subscriber behavior, especially given the evolving nature of email open tracking. This can help diagnose and improve overall deliverability.
• Self-assessment: Experts advise senders to 'take their own pulse' by focusing on their individual performance trends over time, rather than overly worrying about external benchmarks. Your own data provides the most relevant context.
• Deliverability impact: Low open rates, especially for Gmail, can signal underlying deliverability issues. It is crucial to monitor email engagement thresholds for deliverability monitoring and address them promptly, as detailed in Salesforce's email marketing benchmarks.
• Dynamic benchmarks: Given the dynamic nature of inbox providers and user privacy features (like Apple Mail Privacy Protection), historical open rate benchmarks from 2018 must be interpreted with an understanding of these shifts in measurement accuracy.

Key findings

• Annual and quarterly reports: Major ESPs regularly publish reports (e.g., IBM's 2018 report, Cheetah Digital Q2 2018 report) that provide broad industry benchmarks for open rates, click rates, and other KPIs.
• Industry variation: Documentation consistently shows significant variance in open rates across different industries, from retail to non-profit, underscoring that a good rate is highly context-dependent.
• Global vs. regional: Some reports provide regional breakdowns (e.g., North America), acknowledging that geographic location can influence email engagement metrics.
• Metrics beyond open rates: Many reports also include metrics such as click-to-open rates (CTOR), unique click rates, and transaction rates, emphasizing a broader view of email campaign effectiveness.

Key considerations

• Source reliability: When using benchmark data, always consider the source and its methodology. Reports from reputable ESPs or research firms that explicitly detail their data collection are more reliable. IBM, for example, is a known source for 2018 email marketing data (example link: IBM Marketing Cloud Benchmark Report).
• Data granularity: Most documentation provides averages, making it challenging to find specific data for a single month like April 2018 or for a single ISP like Gmail. Understand that these reports offer trends, not precise snapshots. For improving Gmail deliverability, consult guides on improving Gmail deliverability.
• Methodology review: Pay attention to the methodology sections of reports to understand how the data was collected, which countries or industries were included, and any limitations. This helps interpret the applicability of the benchmarks to your specific situation.
• Contextual application: Use documented benchmarks as a general reference for broad trends, but always prioritize your own internal performance data for setting goals and evaluating specific campaigns. For more insights on this, refer to why your email deliverability rate might be wrong.