Open rate is the percentage of emails opened, calculated on the total number of messages actually delivered. It is a metric used – above all – in email marketing.
What open rate is and how to calculate it
Put simply, open rate measures how many people subscribed to a specific list choose to open or view a given email.
Here’s an example. If you send an email to a list of 1,000 subscribers and 200 of them open it, your open rate is 20%.
To calculate it, just use this formula:
Open rate = emails opened / (emails sent – bounces, i.e. emails returned to the sender)
Average open rate
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing. In other words, there is no standard open rate that applies to every industry or type of customer.
Even so, statistics can give us a few useful benchmarks. In general:
- an open rate between 20% and 40% can be considered good;
- rates above 50% are hard to achieve;
- results can be improved with winning, carefully designed strategies, ideally with the help of digital marketing professionals.
How to improve it
As mentioned, there are several ways to influence your open rate, that is, to persuade users to open the emails of your newsletter or email marketing campaign.
Here are a few practical tips:
- Check your subject line According to marketers, it should be around 30–39 characters long. But that’s not enough: a third of recipients decide whether to open an email based on the subject line alone. If you want a solid open rate, make sure it is relevant to the content, immediate and clear. You can go up to a maximum of 120 characters, as long as every word counts.
- Don’t neglect your contacts Good lead generation is essential to success. Avoid buying contact databases and remove long-term inactive subscribers.
- Highlight the benefits The easiest way is to offer interesting content. Put the key point of your message at the start of the text, and be careful not to overdo the hype.