Summary: The “Email Marketing Benchmarking Report” highlights that while inboxes are crowded, success comes from sending the right message with the right timing, showing non-profits have the highest open rates (53.21%) and manufacturing the lowest (32.65%) but highest click-through rates (4.29%); the best days to send emails are Monday and Tuesday, and benchmarking your campaigns by industry open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates is essential for optimizing email marketing effectiveness in 2026.
Let’s start by acknowledging that getting email marketing right in 2026 is complicated. People’s inboxes, both work and personal, are full. My Gmail has 37,635 unread emails as we speak!
Marketers- this means you need to send the right message, with the right content, to the right person, at the right time.
We’ll leave the conversation about getting the messaging and content right for another blog and focus for now on using open and click-through rates (CTRs) to bench mark your email marketing campaign success against.
Related blog: Changes to Bulk Email Marketing – What You Need to Know.
Firstly, average open rates vary by industry.
Average Open Rates by Industry
Our friends at mailerlite have just released their breakdown:
From highest to lowest:
- Non-profit 53.21%
- Health and fitness 48.9%
- Consulting 45.74%
- Education 45.32%
- Politics 44.83%
- Entertainment 43.79%
- Financial 43.26%
- Marketing 39.05%
- Software/IT 38.14%
- Retail 37.50%
- Recruitment 32.7%
- Manufacturing 32.65%
So, if you’re in the business of providing services to the non-profit sector and you’re only getting an open rate of 40%, you’ve got a lot of potential growth to target! If you’re selling to retail and you’re getting an open rate of 50%, then well done, you’re outperforming the industry!
But…(there’s always a but)…
What about the CTR per industry? It’s great when your email is opened, but it’s even better when that email is acted upon!
Interested in revolutionizing your email marketing check out our email marketing tools here or get straight to the point and book a demo with our team now.
Let’s take a look at the statistics:
Average CTR by Industry
- Manufacturing 4.29%
- Politics 4.28%
- Education 3.94%
- Non-Profit 3.67%
- Entertainment 3.37%
- Recruitment 3.02%
- Financial 2.78%
- Consulting 2.63%
- Retail 2.58%
- Marketing 2.12%
- Health & Fitness 1.93%
- Software/IT 1.68%
So, manufacturing has the lowest open rate, but the highest CTR. Again, this is great data to benchmark your success against, but (there’s always another but) let us look at the bounce rates:
Bounce Rate by Industry
- Manufacturing 0.84%
- Software/IT 0.66%
- Consulting 0.54%
- Recruitment 0.5%
- Non-Profit 0.40%
- Financial 0.35%
- Health & Fitness 0.32%
- Retail 0.31%
- Education 0.31%
- Politics 0.28%
- Marketing 0.27%
- Entertainment 0.21%
So, for industry specific bench marking purposes, manufacturers are least likely to receive your email, least likely to open your email, but most likely to act upon your email if they do receive it…. and open it. Phew!
Pro Tip:
Best days to send an email campaign: Monday and Tuesday have the highest open and click-through rates.
Worst days to send an email campaign: Saturday and Sunday have the lowest open and click-through rates.
Use this data wisely!
When it comes to email marketing (or marketing of any kind), comparing your results against industry averages using specific benchmarking data is incredibly important. It helps you understand whether your campaign is yielding expected results and gives you knowledge as to whether those expectations are reasonable!
Remember that benchmarking results takes time and experimentation. You will need to look at data over a worthwhile period of time, using different delivery methods, comparing content and relevance.
Click’s marketing automation, email delivery tools, and integration with your Microsoft Dynamics CRM will help you create campaigns that stand up to every benchmark! Contact us today for more information about our email marketing tools.
