Data & Benchmarks March 17, 2026 • Updated: 6 November 2026

Email marketing
statistics 2026

50+ up-to-date benchmarks, ROI figures and trends for email marketing. From open rates and CTR by industry to automation and personalization impact. Compiled from research by Litmus, Mailchimp, GetResponse, Omnisend, Klaviyo, Salesforce, Eurostat and more, and applied to real sends by our email marketing agency.

30%

of marketing leaders get $36 to $50 back per $1 spent on email

Source: Litmus, 2025

35.63%

average open rate across all Mailchimp users

Source: Mailchimp, 2023

2.62%

average click rate across all Mailchimp users

Source: Mailchimp, 2023

97.69%

of people in the Netherlands (16-74) use email (EU: 81.6%)

Source: Eurostat, 2025

Statistics overview

Email marketing remains one of the most profitable digital channels: in Litmus' 2025 survey, 30% of marketing leaders reported $36 to $50 back for every $1 spent on email, and another 35% reported $10 to $36. But how do your campaigns stack up against the market? Teams serious about ROI pair email with a mature marketing automation agency.

On this page you'll find 50+ up-to-date email marketing statistics and benchmarks, compiled from reports by Litmus, Mailchimp, GetResponse, Campaign Monitor, Omnisend, Klaviyo, Salesforce, HubSpot and Eurostat. Every figure links to its source, with the platform and data year, because benchmarks differ widely between tools. Whether you want to benchmark your open rates, improve your marketing automation or sharpen your email strategy for B2B lead generation: here's the data you need.

Section 1

Email marketing ROI

30%

of marketing leaders get $36 to $50 back per $1 spent on email

Source: Litmus, 2025

$45

ROI per $1 for retail, e-commerce and consumer goods

Source: Litmus survey, 2020

21%

of marketing leaders don't measure email ROI (2023: 36%)

Source: Litmus, 2025

75%

more likely to reach an ROI above 45:1 for advanced AI adopters

Source: Litmus, 2026

ROI per industry (per $1 invested)

Retail, e-commerce & consumer goods $45
Marketing, PR & advertising agencies $42
Software & technology $36
Media, publishing, events, sports & entertainment $32

Source: Litmus State of Email Survey (2,000+ marketers), 2020

  • 35% of marketing leaders get $10 to $36 back for every $1 spent on email, and 5% get more than $50 (Litmus, 2025)
  • High-ROI teams (36:1 or higher) are nearly 2x more likely to send emails daily (Litmus, 2026)
  • High-ROI teams are 28% more likely to use multi-channel attribution models and 14% more likely to tie email to marketing qualified leads (Litmus, 2026)
  • An automated email generated $2.87 in revenue, compared to $0.18 for a campaign email (Omnisend, 2026 report on 2025 data)
Section 2

Open rates by industry

Average open rate by industry (Mailchimp)

Government 40.55%
40.55%
Non-profits 40.04%
40.04%
Education & training 35.64%
35.64%
All users 35.63%
35.63%
Business & finance 31.35%
31.35%
E-commerce 29.81%
29.81%
Vitamin supplements (lowest) 27.34%
27.34%

Source: Mailchimp Email Marketing Benchmarks, data December 2023

4-6 AM

and 5-7 PM: the best send windows

Source: GetResponse, 2024

TUE

highest average open and click rate (Tuesday); weekday differences are small

Source: GetResponse, 2024

37.5%

open rate with emojis in the subject line, vs 42.23% without

Source: GetResponse, 2024

  • Note: Apple Mail Privacy Protection downloads remote content in the background by default, so opens are registered whether or not the email is read (Apple). Apple accounted for 76.56% of tracked opens in September 2026, including these privacy opens (Litmus, 2026)
  • Open rates differ by platform: GetResponse measured 39.64% across 4.4 billion messages sent in 2023 (GetResponse, 2024); Campaign Monitor measured 21.5% across 100+ billion emails sent in 2021 (Campaign Monitor, 2022)
  • Campaign open rates at Omnisend rose for the fifth consecutive year, from 26.6% in 2024 to 30.7% in 2025 (Omnisend, 2026)
  • The average bounce rate at GetResponse is 2.33%, and spam complaints stay below 0.01% (GetResponse, 2024)
  • The unsubscribe rate averages 0.22% per campaign at Mailchimp (Mailchimp, 2023) and 0.15% at GetResponse (GetResponse, 2024)
Section 3

Click-through rates & conversion

Avg. click rate (Mailchimp)
2.62%

click rate, all users

Highest: government 4.58% Lowest: 1.19%

Source: Mailchimp, 2023

Click-to-Open Rate
8.62%

CTOR (clicks/opens) at GetResponse

CTR: 3.25% Data: 2023

Source: GetResponse, 2024

Click-to-conversion
9%

of clicks led to an order (Omnisend)

2024: 5.9% Back-in-stock: 6.46% conv.

Source: Omnisend, 2026

Click-through rate by industry (GetResponse)

Legal services 12.11%
Technology & high tech 7.40%
Non-profits 6.70%
Financial services 5.34%
Retail 5.10%
Real estate 3.51%
Education 3.17%
Health care 3.08%
Travel 2.52%

Source: GetResponse Email Marketing Benchmarks, 2024 (2023 data)

  • Emojis in subject lines did not raise clicks: CTR was 3.32% with emojis and 4.16% without (GetResponse, 2024)
  • In retail, Campaign Monitor measured a 17.1% open rate and 0.7% CTR in 2021, against 28.5% and 4.4% in education (Campaign Monitor, 2022)
  • One in three people who clicked on an automated message made a purchase in 2024 (Omnisend, 2025)
Section 4

Email automation

Welcome Emails
83.63%

average open rate

CTR: 16.6% Data: 2023

Source: GetResponse, 2024

Abandoned Cart
6%

average click rate (email)

Top 10%: 11.3% Revenue/recipient: $6.77

Source: Klaviyo, 2026

Automated vs campaigns
38%

open rate of automated emails

Campaigns: 30.7% $2.87 vs $0.18 per email

Source: Omnisend, 2026

  • Automated emails were just 2% of sends but drove 30% of email revenue in 2025 (Omnisend, 2026)
  • In 2024, automated emails drove 37% of email-generated orders, with 52% higher open rates and 332% higher click rates than campaigns (Omnisend, 2025)
  • Back-in-stock emails had the highest conversion rate of all automations: 6.46% (Omnisend, 2026)
  • The top 10% of abandoned cart emails earn $13.70 per recipient, twice the average of $6.77 (Klaviyo, 2026 (110,000+ customers))
  • High-ROI teams automate customer journey or lifecycle email flows 50% more often than low-ROI teams (Litmus, 2026)
Section 5

Personalization & segmentation

78%

of marketers need more personalized content than they can produce

Source: Salesforce, 2026

41%

of marketers with AI segment on predicted behavior (30% without AI)

Source: Salesforce, 2026

98%

of marketers with AI report at least one barrier to personalization

Source: Salesforce, 2026

17%

name producing content efficiently as their biggest personalization challenge

Source: Litmus, 2025

  • Other personalization challenges: collecting and analyzing data (16%) and measuring the impact on email performance (15%) (Litmus, 2025)
  • Only 55% of marketers say they frequently reply to customer responses via email and SMS; high-performing teams are 1.5x more likely to do so (Salesforce, 2026 (4,450 marketers, 26 countries))
  • High-ROI teams improve deliverability with predictive or automated adjustments 40% more often than low-ROI teams (Litmus, 2026)
Section 6

Mobile vs desktop

76.56%

of tracked opens in Apple Mail (incl. Mail Privacy Protection opens)

Source: Litmus, Sept 2026

16.10%

of tracked opens in Gmail

Source: Litmus, Sept 2026

25%+

of users read email in dark mode

Source: Litmus, 2026

Email client market share (September 2026)

Apple 76.56%
76.56%
Gmail 16.10%
16.10%
Outlook 3.48%
3.48%
Yahoo Mail 2.35%
2.35%
Google Android 0.94%
0.94%
Outlook.com 0.29%
0.29%

Source: Litmus Email Client Market Share, 1.5+ billion opens, 2026

  • Mobile devices remain the primary reading environment for the majority of subscribers, according to Litmus, which no longer publishes a separate mobile/desktop split (Litmus, 2026)
  • Apple counts as one client in this data, covering iPhone, iPad and Mac, plus the opens registered by Mail Privacy Protection (Litmus, 2026)
  • In the Netherlands, 98.74% of people aged 16-24 and 94.24% of people aged 65-74 sent or received email online in 2025 (Eurostat, 2025)
  • Advanced AI adopters are 54% more likely to follow WCAG accessibility standards and 52% more likely to comply with the European Accessibility Act (Litmus, 2026)
Section 7

Global email marketing market

97.69%

of people in the Netherlands (16-74) sent or received email online in 2025

Source: Eurostat, 2025

81.6%

EU average: share of people (16-74) using email online in 2025

Source: Eurostat, 2025

5,000

messages per day: above this, Gmail bulk sender rules apply

Source: Google, 2024

0.30%

maximum spam rate for bulk senders to Gmail (guideline: below 0.10%)

Source: Google, 2024

  • Email use in the EU keeps rising: from 78.69% of people aged 16-74 in 2023 to 80.42% in 2024 and 81.6% in 2025; in the Netherlands from 96.88% to 97.57% and 97.69% (Eurostat, 2025)
  • Since 1 February 2024, senders of more than 5,000 messages per day to Gmail must use SPF, DKIM and DMARC and support one-click unsubscribe for marketing messages (Google, 2024)
  • Yahoo requires bulk senders to honor unsubscribes within 2 days, keep spam rates below 0.3% and publish a DMARC policy of at least p=none (Yahoo Sender Hub, 2024)
  • In the Netherlands, 70% of marketing professionals say their organization uses AI for marketing (62% a year earlier); 17% of those organizations use it for email automation (DDMA DDMO, 2026)
Section 8

AI in email marketing

75%

of marketing organizations use at least one form of AI

Source: Salesforce, 2026

80%

of marketers use AI for content creation

Source: HubSpot, 2026

36%

of high-ROI email teams report advanced AI adoption (low-ROI teams: 23%)

Source: Litmus, 2026

  • 13% of marketers already use agentic AI; full integration remains a work in progress for 61% (Salesforce, 2026)
  • 61% of marketers believe marketing is experiencing its biggest disruption in 20 years due to AI; 75% use AI for media production (HubSpot, 2026)
  • Advanced AI adopters are 75% more likely to achieve an email ROI above 45:1 (Litmus, 2026)
  • High-ROI teams are 2x more likely to believe that over 75% of their email marketing operations will be AI-driven by the end of 2026 (Litmus, 2026)
Summary

Key takeaways

1

Strong ROI: $36 to $50 per $1 for 30% of teams

Another 35% get $10 to $36 back per $1, and 21% still don't measure email ROI at all. Measuring is the first step to improving it.

2

Automation is the multiplier

Automated emails were 2% of sends but 30% of email revenue. Welcome emails (83.63% open rate) and abandoned cart flows ($6.77 per recipient) are must-haves.

3

Personalization is limited by capacity

78% of marketers need more personalized content than they can produce. Marketers with AI segment on predicted behavior more often (41% vs 30%).

4

Mobile-first is mandatory

Apple accounts for 76.56% of tracked opens and over 25% of users read in dark mode. Test every email in Apple Mail, Gmail and dark mode.

5

AI separates high-ROI teams

75% of marketing organizations use AI, and 36% of high-ROI email teams report advanced AI adoption versus 23% of low-ROI teams.

6

Deliverability rules are stricter

Gmail requires bulk senders (5,000+ messages per day) to authenticate with SPF, DKIM and DMARC and to keep spam below 0.30%. Yahoo requires unsubscribes to be honored within 2 days.

Methodology & sources

The statistics on this page come from publicly available research reports, platform benchmarks and official documentation. On 6 November 2026 we checked every figure against its source: each figure links to the page where we read it. Figures we could not trace to a source we could open (including worldwide user counts and market size estimates) have been removed. The sources are:

  • Litmus (Validity): State of Email 2025 and 2026, ROI research, Email Client Market Share
  • Mailchimp: Email Marketing Benchmarks (data December 2023)
  • GetResponse: Email Marketing Benchmarks (4.4 billion messages sent in 2023)
  • Campaign Monitor: Email Marketing Benchmarks 2022 (2021 data)
  • Omnisend: Ecommerce Marketing Statistics Report 2026 (2025 data)
  • Klaviyo: 2026 Omnichannel Benchmark Report (abandoned cart)
  • Salesforce: State of Marketing, tenth edition (4,450 marketers, 26 countries)
  • HubSpot: State of Marketing 2026
  • Eurostat: ICT usage in households and by individuals (isoc_ci_ac_i, 2025)
  • DDMA: Data-Driven Marketing Onderzoek 2026 (Dutch marketing professionals)
  • Google, Yahoo and Apple: sender guidelines, BIMI documentation and Mail Privacy Protection

Disclaimer: Figures are sourced from the most recent available editions of the reports cited. Platform benchmarks differ because each platform has different customers and measurement years. Open rates are affected by Apple Mail Privacy Protection and should be interpreted with caution. ROI figures vary significantly by industry, company size and implementation level. For specific advice on your situation, get in touch with our team.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What is the average open rate for email marketing?

It depends on the platform: Mailchimp reports an average open rate of 35.63% across all users (data December 2023), GetResponse 39.64% (2023 data) and Omnisend 30.7% for campaigns in 2025. By industry, government scores highest at Mailchimp (40.55%) and vitamin supplements lowest (27.34%). Note: Apple Mail Privacy Protection downloads email content in the background, so opens are also registered for emails nobody read. Focus on clicks and conversions as your primary KPIs instead.

What is the ROI of email marketing?

In the Litmus State of Email 2025 survey, 30% of marketing leaders report $36 to $50 back for every $1 spent on email, 35% report $10 to $36 and 5% more than $50, while 21% don't measure it. In Litmus' 2020 survey, retail and e-commerce reported $45 per $1. Returns are highest when email is combined with marketing automation.

What is a good click-through rate (CTR) for emails?

The average click rate at Mailchimp is 2.62%, ranging from 1.19% (vitamin supplements) to 4.58% (government). GetResponse measured an average CTR of 3.25% and a click-to-open rate of 8.62% in 2023. Compare yourself with the benchmark of your own platform and industry, and focus on a single clear CTA per email.

What percentage of emails are opened on mobile?

Litmus no longer publishes a mobile/desktop split, but states that mobile devices remain the primary reading environment for most subscribers. In September 2026, Apple accounted for 76.56% of tracked opens (including Mail Privacy Protection opens), Gmail for 16.10% and Outlook for 3.48%. Over 25% of users read in dark mode, so test every email in Apple Mail, Gmail and dark mode.

How effective is email marketing automation?

At Omnisend, automated emails were 2% of sends in 2025 but drove 30% of email revenue, earning $2.87 per email versus $0.18 for campaigns. Welcome emails reach an 83.63% open rate and 16.6% CTR (GetResponse), and abandoned cart emails at Klaviyo average a 6% click rate and $6.77 revenue per recipient.

How large is the global email marketing market?

Market value estimates are behind paywalls and could not be verified, so we don't publish them. What can be measured: in the EU, 81.6% of people aged 16-74 sent or received email online in 2025, and in the Netherlands 97.69% (Eurostat). Gmail's bulk sender rules apply to anyone sending more than 5,000 messages per day. Want to leverage email for your business? Get in touch to discover the possibilities.

Email marketing expertise from Searchlab.nl

At Searchlab.nl, we help businesses get more out of their email marketing. With our AI-driven approach, we optimize segmentation, automation and personalization for measurably better results. Whether you want to set up your first welcome flow or roll out a complete omnichannel strategy: we combine data-driven insights with proven best practices.

Want to know how your email marketing performs against these benchmarks? Get in touch for a free growth analysis.

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Ruud ten Have

Compiled by

Ruud ten Have

Ruud is a digital marketer with 10+ years of experience in online advertising and AI implementation. At Searchlab, he combines strategic thinking with hands-on AI tooling to deliver measurable results for businesses.

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