Email Open rate is defined as the percentage of emails opened by subscribers who received an email campaign. When calculating email open rate, you must consider the number of emails received and those opened. Bounced emails do not count when calculating open rate.
Example of open rate: Company Z sends an email campaign to 12000 subscribers. 1000 of the 12000 subscribers receive the email campaign. 200 subscribers open the email campaign. Then open rate is 20%
Open rate is calculated as (Open rate x 100) ÷ (Number of Subscribers who received the email campaign).
In the case of company Z described above it will be calculated as:
(200 × 100) ÷ 1000 = 20%
Good Open Rate
An email open rate of between 20% to 40% is considered to be good in email marketing standards. A study conducted by HubSpot on Email Open Rate by industry shows that the average email open rate across various industries is 20.94%.
Importance of Email Open Rate
The major reason as to why open rate is important in email marketing is that it is likely to increase conversion. The more people open your emails the more they are likely to click your email links resulting in high conversions.
It is however important to note that email open rate will be of value to you if it only leads to a high click-through rate and does not lead to a high unsubscribe rate.
