Email Marketing Statistics 2026: ROI, Opens and Clicks

Email campaign open rates sit between 30.7% and 43.46% in the newest platform benchmarks, and click rates cluster around 2%. Omnisend measured a 30.7% campaign open rate across 27 billion emails sent in 2025, MailerLite a 43.46% benchmark open rate and 2.09% click rate across 3.6 million campaigns, and Litmus attributes 76.56% of September 2026 opens to Apple, which is why the open number is the least reliable one on this page.

The short version for a marketer setting targets: judge a list on clicks and revenue per send, not opens. Automated emails earned $2.87 per send in Omnisend's 2025 data against $0.18 for scheduled campaigns, and 35% of companies in Litmus's survey report a return of $10 to $36 for every dollar spent on email.

Every number below links to the page it was read on, with its date. Benchmarks come from the platforms' own reports (Omnisend, MailerLite, Mailchimp), client share and ROI from Litmus, user counts from The Radicati Group's release, sender rules from Google's Gmail sender guidelines, and software counts from the Toolradar email marketing statistics page, all read on 19 October 2026.

Toolradar data: of the 108 email marketing tools on Toolradar, the software directory we run, 62 (57%) offer a free tier as of 19 October 2026, and ActiveCampaign is the most cross-shopped name, listed as an alternative to 89 other tools.

Five findings

1. Opens are rising, clicks are not. Omnisend's campaign open rate climbed for a fifth straight year, from 26.6% in 2024 to 30.7% in 2025, while its click rates fell over the same period. A metric that rises while the action behind it falls is measuring something other than reading.
2. Apple controls three quarters of measured opens. Litmus counted 76.56% of the 1.5 billion opens it tracked in September 2026 as Apple, against 16.10% for Gmail. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection loads images in the background, so many of those opens are machine opens.
3. Automation is a 2% slice of volume that earns 30% of revenue. In Omnisend's 2025 data, automated emails were 2% of sends and 30% of email-driven revenue, a 16x gap in revenue per send.
4. Unsubscribes nearly tripled in MailerLite's data. The 2025 benchmark unsubscribe rate was 0.22%, up from 0.08% in 2024, which MailerLite links to Gmail making one-click unsubscribe easy.
5. Email still reaches more people than any network. Radicati counts over 4.4 billion email users in 2024 and forecasts over 4.9 billion by 2028, business and consumer users combined.

Email open and click rate benchmarks, side by side

Each platform measures a different customer base, so the spread between them is the useful part. An ecommerce-heavy sender like Omnisend reports lower opens than a creator and small-business sender like MailerLite.

Source	Data period	Sample	Open rate	Click rate	Unsubscribe rate
Omnisend	2025	27 billion emails, 150,000 brands	30.7%	Fell vs 2024	Not reported
MailerLite	Dec 2024 to Nov 2025	3.6 million campaigns, 181,000 accounts	43.46%	2.09%	0.22%
Mailchimp, all users	Data as of Dec 2023	Campaigns sent to 1,000+ subscribers	35.63%	2.62%	0.22%
MarketingShot (our list)	November 2026	One B2B newsletter on beehiiv	32%	1.3%	Not published

Sources: each platform's benchmark page linked above, read 19 October 2026. MarketingShot figures come from beehiiv's API.

Mailchimp's table is the oldest of the three and says so: its page notes the data was last updated in December 2023 and warns that Apple's privacy feature affects open accuracy. Treat it as the pre-2024 baseline, not the current one.

MailerLite's click-to-open rate, the share of openers who click, was 6.81% in 2025, up from 5.63% in 2024. Click-to-open still uses the inflated open count as its denominator, so it understates real reader engagement on Apple-heavy lists, but it moves in the right direction when content improves.

Dupple data: MarketingShot, the newsletter behind this site, opened at 32% and clicked at 1.3% in the beehiiv snapshot of November 1, 2026. Across Dupple's six newsletters, open rates run from 31% to 37% and click rates from 1% to 1.8%. Dupple's newsletters are sent on beehiiv, so these numbers describe one platform's measurement, not the market. The newsletter open rate benchmarks page breaks them down list by list.

Benchmarks for marketing senders

A marketing agency or SaaS marketer should not hold a list to the all-industry number. MailerLite publishes 46 industries, and the ones closest to this site's readers sit well below the overall median.

Industry (MailerLite 2025)	Open rate	Click rate	Click-to-open	Unsubscribe
Marketing and advertising	37.23%	1.3%	6.09%	0.15%
Software and web app	39.31%	1.15%	5.4%	0.2%
Publishing company	34.24%	2.82%	9.12%	0.2%
e-commerce	32.67%	1.07%	Not quoted here	Not quoted here
All industries	43.46%	2.09%	6.81%	0.22%

Source: MailerLite email benchmarks, published 3 December 2025, read 19 October 2026.

Marketing and advertising senders click at 1.3%, about 0.8 points below the all-industry figure. Marketers are a skeptical audience that receives a lot of email from vendors, and the number reflects it. Publishers do the opposite: a lower open rate but a 2.82% click rate, because a newsletter built around links earns clicks by design. If your program looks like a content newsletter, compare yourself to the publishing row; if it looks like product announcements, the software row is the honest bar.

Mailchimp's own sector rows tell a similar story with older data: business and finance senders opened at 31.35% and clicked at 2.78%, ecommerce at 29.81% and 1.74%. The best email marketing software ranking covers which platforms report these metrics, and how.

Why open rate stopped meaning what it used to

Apple's share of measured opens is the single biggest distortion in email statistics. Litmus groups Apple Mail, iPhone, iPad and Apple's Mail Privacy opens together at 76.56% of September 2026 opens, calculated from over 1.5 billion opens in its analytics product. Gmail follows at 16.10%, Outlook desktop at 3.48% and Yahoo Mail at 2.35%.

Litmus itself says opens from users opted into Mail Privacy Protection are not reliable opens. That has three practical consequences for a marketer:

• Open-based A/B tests on subject lines are noisy. A test where most opens are automatic can pick a winner by chance. Test on clicks, or on opens from non-Apple clients only.
• Open-based list cleaning keeps dead contacts. A subscriber whose Apple device fetches images will look engaged forever. Use click or reply recency to prune, then run the list through one of the email verification tools.
• Cross-platform comparisons are shaky. The gap between Omnisend's and MailerLite's headline open rates comes partly from their senders reaching different mixes of Apple and Gmail users, not only from one audience reading more.

This is also why the Omnisend pattern matters: opens up five years in a row while clicks fell. Our reading of that gap is that a growing share of recorded opens is automatic, not that subscribers lost interest in clicking.

Email marketing ROI and automation statistics

The return figures are where email justifies its budget, and the strongest numbers come from automation, not campaigns.

Metric	Figure	Source and date
Revenue per automated email	$2.87	Omnisend, 2025 data
Revenue per scheduled campaign email	$0.18	Omnisend, 2025 data
Automation share of email sends	2%	Omnisend, 2025 data
Automation share of email revenue	30%	Omnisend, 2025 data
Campaign click-to-conversion	9% in 2025, up from 5.9%	Omnisend, 2025 data
Companies reporting $10 to $36 back per $1	35%	Litmus ROI of email, survey of nearly 500 marketers

Sources: Omnisend 2026 ecommerce marketing report and Litmus, read 19 October 2026.

A worked scenario, our arithmetic: a store sending one campaign to 10,000 subscribers would expect about $1,800 in attributed revenue at Omnisend's $0.18 per send. The same 10,000 sends spread across welcome, cart and browse automations would come to about $28,700 at $2.87 per send. Automations fire on intent, so the comparison flatters them, but it explains why a small sender should build three flows before adding a fourth weekly campaign.

Click-to-conversion rising from 5.9% to 9% while clicks fell says the same thing from another angle: fewer people click, and the ones who do arrive ready to buy. For ecommerce senders, the email marketing for ecommerce ranking and the Omnisend review cover the platforms whose automation libraries produce numbers like these.

Deliverability rules every bulk sender now follows

Google's sender guidelines turned several best practices into hard requirements for anyone mailing personal Gmail accounts. Senders above 5,000 messages a day must support one-click unsubscribe in marketing and subscribed messages, and must authenticate with SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

The spam threshold is the number to watch. Google asks senders to keep the spam rate reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.10% and never to reach 0.30%. On a 50,000-contact send, 0.10% is 50 complaints; 150 complaints crosses the line where delivery starts to suffer, our arithmetic.

The same rules explain the jump in MailerLite's unsubscribe rate from finding 4. When leaving takes one click, readers who lost interest unsubscribe instead of marking the email as spam, which protects the sender's reputation with Gmail. A rising unsubscribe rate next to a flat spam rate means the list is cleaning itself, so it is a number to watch rather than to fight. The email deliverability tools ranking covers monitoring for both numbers.

Email reach and the software market

Radicati's Email Statistics Report, 2024-2028, released 2 December 2024, counts over 4.4 billion email users worldwide in 2024, growing to over 4.9 billion by 2028. Its explanation is structural: an email address is required to sign up for almost any online service, so the channel grows with internet use.

The software side is crowded and cheap to enter. Toolradar's email marketing category holds 108 tools, 81% of them added to the directory during 2026, and 57% have a free tier. That free share is why the free email marketing software ranking exists as its own page: most small lists never need to pay at the start.

Buyer attention concentrates on a few names. On Toolradar, ActiveCampaign is listed as an alternative to 89 tools, Klaviyo to 75 and Mailchimp to 62. Over the last 30 days to 19 October 2026, Klaviyo drew the most compare-page visits in the category with 82, ahead of Mailchimp at 65 and beehiiv at 44. The Mailchimp vs Klaviyo comparison and Mailchimp pricing page are the two most useful reads for a buyer choosing between the leaders.

How to use these numbers

Set a click target, not an open target. If you send a marketing or SaaS newsletter, 1.15% to 1.3% click is the industry bar in MailerLite's data and clearing 2% puts a list above the all-industry figure; a content-led newsletter should aim nearer the publishing row's 2.82%. Then build automations before more campaigns, because Omnisend's revenue gap per send is 16x. Keep the spam rate under 0.10% and treat a rising unsubscribe rate as list hygiene, not failure. To grow the list behind all of this, see how to grow an email list from zero, and for the AI side of the marketing stack, the AI marketing statistics page has the tool counts.

Methodology

Every figure was read on its publisher's own page on 19 October 2026: Omnisend's 2026 ecommerce marketing report (2025 data, 27 billion emails), MailerLite's benchmark post (3.6 million campaigns, December 2024 to November 2025), Mailchimp's benchmark page (data as of December 2023), Litmus's client market share report (September 2026, 1.5 billion opens) and ROI infographic, Radicati's December 2024 release, Google's Gmail sender guidelines and Toolradar's email marketing statistics page. MarketingShot and network figures come from beehiiv's API through Dupple's weekly audience file, dated in the text. Revenue per 10,000 sends and complaint counts are our arithmetic and are labeled. Dupple runs no email experiments of its own for this page. Louis Corneloup, founder of Toolradar and Dupple, edited it. Next refresh when Omnisend and MailerLite publish 2026 data.

FAQ

What is the average email open rate in 2026?

The newest platform benchmarks put it between 30.7% and 43.46%. Omnisend measured a 30.7% campaign open rate across 27 billion emails in 2025, and MailerLite a 43.46% benchmark across 3.6 million campaigns from December 2024 to November 2025. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection inflates both, since Litmus attributes 76.56% of September 2026 opens to Apple.

What is a good email click rate?

MailerLite's 2025 benchmark click rate is 2.09% across all industries, and Mailchimp's older all-user figure is 2.62%. Marketing and advertising senders click lower, at 1.3% in MailerLite's data, while publishers reach 2.82%. Compare against your own industry row rather than the overall average.

What is the ROI of email marketing?

In Litmus's survey of nearly 500 marketing professionals, 35% of companies report a return of $10 to $36 for every $1 spent on email. Omnisend's 2025 data shows automated emails earning $2.87 per send against $0.18 for scheduled campaigns, so the return depends heavily on how much of a program is automated.

How many people use email in 2026?

Radicati counted over 4.4 billion email users worldwide in 2024 and forecasts over 4.9 billion by 2028, combining business and consumer users. Its 2024-2028 report was released on 2 December 2024.

Why are email open rates unreliable?

Apple's Mail Privacy Protection downloads email images, including the tracking pixel, in the background, which records an open whether or not a person read the email. Litmus counts roughly three quarters of September 2026 opens as Apple, and Mailchimp's benchmark page warns that the feature affects open accuracy. Clicks, replies and revenue per send are more trustworthy.

What is a normal unsubscribe rate?

MailerLite's 2025 benchmark unsubscribe rate is 0.22%, up from 0.08% in 2024, and Mailchimp's all-user figure is also 0.22%. Marketing and advertising senders sit at 0.15% in MailerLite's data. Google separately asks bulk senders to keep their spam complaint rate below 0.10%.

Cite this: MarketingShot, "Email Marketing Statistics 2026: ROI, Opens and Clicks", November 2026. Sources: Omnisend, MailerLite, Mailchimp, Litmus, The Radicati Group, Google, Toolradar.

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