What Is a Good Email Open Rate in 2026? Full Benchmarks

There is no single good open rate anymore. There are two, and the right one depends on how your platform counts an open.

The averages come from Brevo and MailerLite data covered below. The "good" thresholds are our editorial targets, set a few points above those averages. They are not published benchmarks.

Neither number is wrong. They describe the same people reading the same emails. One counts only human behavior. The other also counts opens triggered by software.

Three Questions to Ask Before You Compare

1. Does your ESP filter machine opens? Some platforms remove Apple MPP opens by default. Others report them as normal opens. Many show both if you look.

2. Unique or total opens? Unique opens count each person once. Total opens count every open, including rereads, and always run higher.

3. Median or average? A median is the middle result. An average gets pulled up by a few very high performers. The same data can produce noticeably different numbers.

Get these three answers first. Comparing a filtered open rate against an unfiltered benchmark makes a healthy program look broken.

Benchmarks at a Glance

Use this as a quick reference. Each figure is covered in detail later in the guide.

• If your filtered rate sits above 25%, your opens are healthy. Shift focus to clicks.

• If your unfiltered rate sits below 30%, check placement and list hygiene before anything else.

• If your rate jumped more than 10 points in a month with no strategy change, assume machine opens until clicks prove otherwise.

Why the Same Program Reports 21% and 43%

In September 2021, Apple launched Mail Privacy Protection. It changed how opens are recorded for every sender, whether they noticed or not.

How Apple MPP Creates Opens

• Open tracking works through a tiny invisible image. When the image loads, the platform records an open.

• With MPP turned on, Apple Mail downloads that image in advance through Apple's servers, whether or not the person ever reads the email.

• The platform sees the image load and records an open. No human was involved.

• Apple also hides the reader's IP address, so location and device data become less precise too.

The Proof Is in the Clicks

If more people were actually reading emails, clicks would rise with opens. They did not.

• In Omeda's study of roughly 2 billion emails, unique open rates climbed from 15.2% to 29.0% after MPP.

• Over the same period, unique clicks held flat at about 1.5%.

• Opens nearly doubled. Reading behavior did not change.

How Big the Gap Is Today

Brevo is one of the few platforms that publishes both numbers for the same customer base.

That is a gap of roughly 13 points created by counting, not by readers. In audiences with heavy Apple usage, such as executives and knowledge workers, the gap can be larger.

Other Machine Opens

• Security scanners. Corporate email filters often open messages and load images to check them for threats. This mostly inflates B2B open rates.

• Preview panes. Some desktop clients load images when an email is highlighted, even if it is not read.

• Privacy tools. Image proxies in other clients and browser extensions can trigger or block opens.

The takeaway: a high open rate on a list with many Apple users can hide falling engagement. Always read opens next to clicks.

Email Open Rate Benchmarks by Platform

Each ESP publishes benchmarks from its own customers. The numbers differ because the customers, industries, and counting methods differ.

What Sits Behind Each Number

• MailerLite: about 3.6 million campaigns from roughly 181,000 accounts across 46 industries, sent between December 2024 and November 2025. Reported as medians.

• ActiveCampaign: customer campaigns from January 1 to December 10, 2025, not adjusted for MPP.

• Brevo: campaigns from more than 175,000 active customers across 2025, reported with and without MPP opens.

• Klaviyo: a 31% open rate across more than 183,000 brands, as cited by Prospeo. Klaviyo's customer base leans heavily toward ecommerce, which pulls the number down.

Benchmarks to Skip

• Mailchimp's 35.63% was last updated in December 2023. It is now more than two years old.

• Campaign Monitor's 21.5% comes from 2021 data, collected before MPP was widely adopted.

• Plenty of articles still quote both. Neither reflects how opens are counted today.

Open Rate Benchmarks by Industry

Industry changes the answer more than almost anything else. A 30% open rate is weak for a nonprofit and solid for an online store.

With Machine Opens Included (MailerLite Medians)

With Machine Opens Excluded (Brevo Averages)

Why Ecommerce Sits at the Bottom of Both Lists

• Volume. Online stores send more often than most industries, and each extra send pulls the average down.

• Promotions tab. Gmail routes most sale emails to the Promotions tab, where they compete with dozens of other brands.

• Large, loose lists. Checkout opt-ins create big lists of customers who bought once and never planned to read every email.

• Discount fatigue. When every email is a sale, none of them feels urgent.

Stores that beat the ecommerce benchmark usually send fewer, more specific emails to tighter segments. Our breakdown of fashion email marketing examples shows what that looks like in practice.

Why Nonprofits and Government Sit at the Top

• Subscribers join for a cause or a service they rely on, not a discount.

• These senders email less often, so each message carries more weight.

• Content tends to be informational, which readers expect and want.

Open Rate Benchmarks by Email Type

Email type often matters more than industry. A triggered email sent seconds after someone acts will outperform any scheduled campaign.

These ranges come from Darkroom's 2026 ecommerce benchmarks, which combine agency portfolio data with Klaviyo and Litmus reports. The source does not say whether they include machine opens.

• Klaviyo data puts abandoned cart emails at a 50.5% average open rate, against 34.2% for standard ecommerce campaigns.

• Post-purchase emails win because buyers are waiting for order and shipping details.

• Welcome emails win because the subscriber just raised their hand.

• Win-back emails sit lowest because they target people who have already stopped reading.

What This Means for Your Program

• Benchmark flows and campaigns separately. A blended number hides both.

• A strong welcome flow can make a weak campaign calendar look fine in a monthly report.

• If flow open rates fall, check triggers and timing before rewriting copy.

Need to build or rebuild your flows? Start with our guide to email marketing automation workflows, then run the Klaviyo flow health checklist to find what is broken before you redesign anything.

B2B, B2C, and Cold Email Open Rates

B2B and B2C emails are opened in different places, by different software, for different reasons.

B2B Open Rates

Tofu's 2026 B2B roundup, which aggregates seven public benchmark sources, puts the average B2B open rate at 34.2%. The top quartile reaches 43.8%.

• SaaS and software sit at the low end of B2B at 31.4%, likely because buyers receive so much vendor email.

• The same roundup estimates that MPP affects 55% to 60% of opens in many B2B audiences, since executives disproportionately use Apple devices.

• Corporate security scanners add further machine opens on top of MPP.

B2C Open Rates

• Consumer inboxes sit mostly in Gmail, Apple Mail, Yahoo, and Outlook.com.

• The Promotions tab and heavy brand competition push B2C averages below B2B for most retail categories.

• Mobile reading dominates, so the subject line and preheader carry more weight.

Cold Email Open Rates

• Tofu's roundup puts cold outbound at a 23.4% open rate.

• Cold email opens are not comparable to opted-in lists. Recipients never asked to hear from you.

• Many cold senders now turn off open tracking entirely, because the tracking pixel can hurt inbox placement. Reply rate is the better metric here.

Signs Your Open Rate Is Lying to You

An open rate can look healthy while engagement falls apart underneath it. Watch for these patterns.

• Open rates rose sharply overnight with no change to your strategy.

• Opens are climbing while clicks stay flat or drop.

• A large share of opens happen within seconds of delivery.

• Opens look strong at Apple Mail but weak at Gmail and Outlook.

• B2B emails show opens from every recipient at a company within the same minute.

• Click-to-open rate keeps falling for no clear reason.

If two or more of these show up, filter machine opens in your ESP if it allows that, and shift your reporting toward clicks and conversions.

What Actually Moves Your Open Rate

Real opens come from people who recognize you, trust you, and see a reason to read now. These six levers move that number, in rough order of impact.

1. Inbox Placement

• An email in the spam folder cannot be opened. Placement problems look like an open rate problem.

• Check authentication, complaint rates, and bounce rates before testing subject lines.

• Our roundup of email deliverability tools covers the options for monitoring placement.

2. List Hygiene

• Removing contacts who have not engaged in 6 to 12 months lowers send volume and raises the open rate.

• Run a short re-engagement sequence before you remove anyone.

• Smaller lists with real readers also improve your sender reputation.

3. Sender Name

• People decide whether to open based on who sent it before they read the subject line.

• Use a name readers recognize. Test a person's name plus brand ("Maya at Brand") against the brand alone.

• Keep the sender name consistent so readers learn to look for it.

4. Subject Line and Preheader

• Treat them as one unit. The preheader is the second half of the subject line.

• Lead with the specific benefit or news, not a clever setup.

• Keep the subject line short enough to read in full on a phone.

• Our comparison of AI copywriting tools for email covers which tools write subject lines in your brand voice.

5. Segmentation and Relevance

• One email to the whole list will always underperform three emails to three segments.

• Segment by behavior first: recent buyers, recent browsers, and lapsed customers.

• Our guide to AI email personalization for lean teams shows how to do this without a large team.

6. Send Time and Frequency

• Generic "best day to send" charts average out audiences that look nothing like yours.

• Test send times against your own list for at least four sends before you change the schedule.

• Sending more often usually lowers the open rate per email, even if total opens rise.

The Metrics to Track Alongside Open Rate

Open rate still has a use. It shows trends and flags subject line problems. It should not be the only number in your report.

All three medians come from MailerLite's December 2024 to November 2025 data. Because MPP inflates opens, real click-to-open rates are higher than the reported median.

How to Use Each Metric

• Click rate: your primary engagement number for leadership reports.

• Click-to-open rate: use it to compare email designs and content, not subject lines.

• Unsubscribe rate: watch for spikes after frequency changes or new segments.

• Spam complaint rate: keep it under 0.1%. It affects whether future emails get delivered at all.

• Conversion rate and revenue per email: the numbers that matter most to the business.

How to Benchmark Your Own Open Rate

Use this five-step process instead of comparing yourself against the first number you find online.

1. Check how your ESP counts opens. Find out whether machine opens are filtered and whether the report shows unique or total opens.

2. Pick a matching benchmark. Compare filtered rates with filtered benchmarks, and unfiltered with unfiltered.

3. Narrow it down. Compare against your industry and email type, not the overall average.

4. Track your own trend. Your rolling 90-day average is more reliable than any external benchmark.

5. Read opens next to clicks. If opens rise while clicks fall, check for machine opens or placement problems.

Use delivered emails, not sent emails. Bounced emails were never delivered and should not count against you.

How to Report Open Rate to Leadership

Leadership teams often anchor on open rate because it is the biggest, most familiar number. A clear report keeps them from celebrating machine opens or panicking over a filter change.

• State the counting method next to the open rate every time, for example "unique opens, machine opens excluded."

• Show a 90-day trend line instead of a single month, so one unusual send does not drive decisions.

• Put click rate and revenue first. Open rate supports the story but should not lead it.

• If you switch ESPs or turn on machine-open filtering, mark the date on the chart. Open rates can drop overnight with no change in reader behavior.

• Report flows and campaigns as separate lines, because they behave differently.

This framing protects the team. When open rates fall after a filter change, leadership already knows the number measures counting, not readers.

A 30-Day Plan to Raise Your Real Open Rate

Use this plan if your filtered open rate sits below your industry benchmark. Each week builds on the one before.

Week 1: Measure Correctly

• Turn on machine-open filtering in your ESP, or note that it is not available.

• Pull 90 days of open, click, and unsubscribe data split by flows and campaigns.

• Check spam folder placement with a seed test or your ESP's deliverability report.

Week 2: Clean the List

• Send a short re-engagement email to contacts with no clicks in six months.

• Suppress anyone who does not respond.

• Verify any imported or older segments before your next campaign.

Week 3: Test Sender Name and Subject Line

• Run one sender name test against your largest segment.

• Test two subject line approaches: a specific benefit against a direct piece of news.

• Keep everything else the same so the result is clear.

Week 4: Segment and Resend

• Split your next campaign into at least three behavior-based segments.

• Write a different opening line for each segment.

• Compare the filtered open rate and click rate against your Week 1 baseline.

Common Open Rate Mistakes

• Chasing the top number. A 43% median from one platform is not a target for an ecommerce brand using another.

• Ignoring flows. Teams spend hours on campaign subject lines while a broken welcome flow quietly loses their best readers.

• Removing tracking from reports entirely. Opens are still useful for spotting trends. Use them as one signal, not the scorecard.

Where Migma Fits and Where It Does Not

Migma works on the parts of open rate you control before you send: how recognizable your emails are, how they compare to competitors, and whether they render correctly.

• Brand DNA import and Knowledge Base. Migma pulls your logo, colors, fonts, and tone from your site and lets you upload past emails and guidelines, so every email looks and sounds like you.

• Competitor email tracking. It monitors competitors' subject lines, send frequency, design patterns, and promotions, so you can set realistic targets for your category.

• Email Preflight. It previews each email across 22+ real devices and clients before it goes out.

• Localization. It writes once and sends in 30+ languages, which helps international lists receive emails they can actually read.

The honest limitation: Migma does not separate machine opens from human opens. That reporting comes from your ESP or sending platform, so check its settings to see which open rate you are looking at.

Final Word

A good open rate only means something next to two other facts: how your platform counts opens, and what your click rate is doing.

The benchmarks will shift again when the next round of reports covers 2026 sends. Apple may change how MPP works, and more ESPs will likely filter machine opens by default. Your counting method and your own trend line will stay the most useful reference you have.

Find your counting method, choose a benchmark that matches it, and compare within your industry and email type. Then spend your energy on what readers actually respond to: recognizable senders, relevant content, and emails that land in the inbox.

Build emails readers recognize and want to open. Start your Migma free trial and bring your brand into every send.

Frequently Asked Questions