Newsletter Open and Click Rate Benchmarks 2026: The MarketingShot Numbers

MarketingShot's own list opened at 31.3% and clicked at 1.9% in September 2026, a click-to-open rate of 6.1%. Across the six Dupple newsletters running on the same sending platform, open rates span 27.5% to 37%, and click-to-open rates span 3.5% to 9.8%. MarketingShot sits in the upper half on opens and just above the midpoint on click-to-open, which is the benchmark a marketer running a comparable B2B list should actually hold themselves to, not an industry-wide average pulled from a vendor report.

The six-list benchmark

Dupple data: we operate six newsletters on Beehiiv, totaling 898,075 active subscribers as of 20 September 2026 (Techpresso's count also includes a legacy MailerLite list). Pulling average_open_rate and average_click_rate straight from Beehiiv's API for all six gives a same-platform, same-methodology comparison that a cross-vendor survey cannot offer, because every sender measures opens and clicks a little differently.

Read from Beehiiv's API on 20 September 2026. Click-to-open is derived: click rate divided by open rate, a figure Beehiiv does not report directly.

All six newsletters send on Beehiiv, the same platform MarketingShot itself runs on, so the rate comparison is not a vendor pitch: it is us checking our own numbers against each other before we tell a reader what a healthy send looks like.

What counts as a good open rate in 2026

An open rate on its own answers less than it used to. Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, documented on Apple's own privacy pages, downloads the remote content in an email, including the tracking pixel, in the background by default, whether or not a person actually reads the message. That inflates the reported open count on any list with a meaningful share of Apple Mail users, and the size of the inflation depends on how many of your readers use Apple Mail, which nobody sending the newsletter controls or fully knows.

That does not make open rate useless. It makes the absolute number less trustworthy than the trend on your own list and the comparison against lists measured the identical way. Techpresso's 37% is the highest of the six here, and it also has by far the largest, oldest list, which usually depresses engagement rather than lifting it. A likely explanation is a heavier concentration of Apple Mail subscribers inflating the count, not that a 754,476-subscriber general-tech brief is genuinely more engaging than a niche list a tenth its size. Read a single open rate as directional, and read the spread across comparable lists as the more honest signal.

For a marketing-focused B2B send in the size range MarketingShot and its sister lists occupy, low-to-mid 30s is the realistic band once Apple's inflation is priced in. A newsletter reporting much below 25% likely has a genuine engagement problem, a stale segment, or deliverability trouble worth investigating before the next campaign. A number well above 40% on a list of any real size is worth double-checking against the platform's own methodology before it goes in a deck, because it is more often a measurement artifact than a real result.

Click-to-open is the number that actually separates these lists

Click-to-open asks a narrower question than open rate: of the people the platform recorded as opening, how many went on to click something. Because the same pixel-prefetch problem that inflates opens also inflates the denominator of this ratio, click-to-open does not erase Apple's effect, but it isolates whether the content, once in front of a reader, earned an action. That is closer to what a marketer actually wants to know before reusing a subject line or a send time.

On this measure, the six lists spread 2.8x, from Techpresso's 3.5% up to AIpresso's 9.8%, and the pattern runs opposite to what raw subscriber count would suggest. The smallest list here converts attention into clicks nearly three times better than the largest one. Three things drive that gap, and only the first is really about the writing.

Audience specificity. A 23,884-subscriber list built around one category has a narrower, more self-selected readership than a 754,476-subscriber general brief covering an entire industry. The larger list is not worse edited; it is answering a broader question to a broader crowd, and a broader crowd clicks a smaller share of any single link.

List age and accumulated inactives. Older lists carry readers who still open out of habit, filed under Apple's inflation on top of that, but stopped clicking months or years ago. Those readers sit in the open count and suppress click-to-open without any change in what gets sent.

Link relevance per subscriber. A specialist send can point to one link most of its readers plausibly want. A general one has to spread links across a wider range of interests, and each individual link reaches a smaller fraction of the list.

If you run a newsletter and want to know whether last week's send actually worked, click-to-open on your own list, tracked over time, tells you more than a single open-rate snapshot ever will.

Where MarketingShot lands, and what that means for benchmarking your own list

MarketingShot's 6.1% click-to-open sits just above the six-list median of 6%, and its open rate ranks third of six, ahead of Devshot, Cyberpresso and AIpresso and behind Finpresso and Techpresso. For a 35,007-subscriber marketing newsletter, that puts it squarely in the middle of a same-platform comparison rather than at either extreme, which is the more useful reference point than a single published average.

A marketer benchmarking their own list against these numbers should weight three things before drawing a conclusion. First, match list size: comparing a 5,000-subscriber launch newsletter against Techpresso's 754,476-subscriber figure tells you almost nothing, because the mechanisms above move with scale, not with send quality alone. Second, match platform where possible; Beehiiv, Mailchimp, Klaviyo and others each define and report opens slightly differently, and a benchmark pulled from a different platform is not directly comparable even at the same list size. Third, track click-to-open over your own last six months before comparing outward at all. A list improving its own click-to-open quarter over quarter is doing better regardless of where it sits against anyone else's number.

The one comparison worth making immediately: if your click-to-open sits meaningfully below 4% on a list under 50,000 subscribers, that is closer to what a general, much larger list reports here, and it is a segmentation or relevance problem worth investigating before a growth push adds more names to a list that already is not converting attention it has.

How we measured

• Source. Beehiiv API v2, fields average_open_rate and average_click_rate, read for all six Dupple newsletters on 20 September 2026.
• Subscribers. Active subscriptions on the same API call, per publication, not deduplicated across the network. Techpresso's figure adds the active members of its pre-Beehiiv MailerLite list; its open and click rates are Beehiiv-only.
• Click-to-open. Derived as click rate divided by open rate. Beehiiv does not report this ratio directly.
• Refresh. This table is regenerated from the same weekly audience file that feeds our other newsletter pages, so the date above moves forward each time the numbers do.
• Scope. Six newsletters, one sending platform, one operator. This is not an industry survey, and it should not be read as one; it is a same-methodology comparison, which is the part most published benchmark reports cannot offer.
• No paid placement. Nobody paid to be included in or excluded from this table.
• Tool. If your own numbers are not tracked this cleanly yet, the best email marketing software and best email marketing for small business roundups cover platforms that report opens and clicks the same way Beehiiv does here.

FAQ

What is a good newsletter open rate in 2026?

Across these six B2B newsletters, open rates run from 27.5% to 37%, with a median of 30.8%. Treat any single published benchmark cautiously: Apple's Mail Privacy Protection pre-loads tracking pixels regardless of whether a subscriber reads the email, which inflates the reported figure by an amount that depends on how many Apple Mail users are on the list.

What is a good click-to-open rate for a newsletter?

In this comparison, click-to-open runs from 3.5% to 9.8%, with a median of 6%. It is the more trustworthy engagement number because it measures whether an already-counted open led to an action, and smaller, more specialized lists consistently outperform larger general ones on this measure.

Does a bigger newsletter list mean a worse open rate?

Not directly, and this dataset makes the point plainly. Techpresso is both the largest list here and the one with the highest reported open rate, most likely because Apple's pixel prefetching inflates opens more on a bigger, older subscriber base, not because a broad tech brief out-engages a narrow one. Size hurts click-to-open far more consistently than it hurts open rate.

Why does Apple's Mail Privacy Protection affect these benchmarks?

It downloads an email's remote content, including the open-tracking pixel, in the background automatically, whether or not a person opens the message. That records an open the sender cannot distinguish from a genuine one, which is why click-to-open, not raw open rate, is the safer number for comparing lists.

What is a good click rate for a marketing newsletter?

Across these six lists, click rate runs from 1.3% to 2.7%, with a median of 1.85%. MarketingShot's own click rate is 1.9%, just above that median and in line with Finpresso, a similarly sized B2B list on the same platform.

How often is this benchmark updated?

Weekly, from the same audience file that powers our other newsletter data pages. The date on the table above is the date these figures were last pulled from Beehiiv's API, and it will move forward on the next refresh.

Should I compare my newsletter's open rate against a benchmark from a different platform?

Not directly. Beehiiv, Kit, Mailchimp and other senders define and calculate opens and clicks with small methodological differences, so a benchmark pulled from a different platform is not a like-for-like comparison even at a similar list size. Match platform first, then list size, then compare.

Cite this: MarketingShot, "Newsletter Open and Click Rate Benchmarks 2026: The MarketingShot Numbers", September 2026.

For more on turning list growth into a list that actually opens and clicks, read how we grew MarketingShot's own list and our beehiiv vs Kit comparison for marketers picking a sending platform. If a stronger acquisition channel is the gap, the best newsletter growth tools roundup and the beehiiv review cover the tools, and the best email deliverability tools guide is the next stop once opens look fine but placement does not. Toolradar's own beehiiv profile has the full feature and pricing breakdown, and the network-wide version of this dataset, covering all six lists in more depth, lives on Dupple's newsletter engagement benchmarks page.

MarketingShot is the free daily marketing brief this data comes from. Subscribe here to see what a 6.1% click-to-open list actually sends.