Average industry rates for email as of September 2023

[BrianM88]

Regarding "Open" percentages, would the email list that Constant Contact uses for comparison be a list that has been narrowed by eliminating email addresses that have not opened an email in 12 months, for example?  We don't eliminate any emails, regardless if they have ever been opened from our mailings.

[William_A · Accepted solution]

Hello @BrianM88 ,

Stats for industry averages are gathered from the email data sent by Constant Contact customers who have indicated their business type. We aren't comparing this to a specific list. 

If you're referring to your specific account's averages, this is pulled from all of your data, and therefore your rate may spike or dip based on your contact management and sending habits.

[BrianM88]

Thanks, William for your reply. I was curious as to whether most Constant Contact accounts eliminate email addresses that are not active and haven't opened an email for some time? Those numbers would affect the Open Rates quite a bit, I suppose?

[William_A]

Hello @BrianM88 ,

If you're not sending to them, they won't calculate for an email's open rate, and thus won't affect your overall average. The average open rate is derived from the open rates of your emails. So if you're regularly sending emails to 100 contacts and getting a 75% open rate, then your rate will be higher than someone sending to 1000 contacts at a time with a 30% open rate.

Typically customers will try to keep costs down by getting rid of contacts they don't regularly send to, either deleting or wholly unsubscribing if they want to prevent accidental or synced imports of those same contacts.