Understanding email open rates and how to improve them
Published on November 25, 2025/Last edited on November 25, 2025/14 min read
Published on November 25, 2025/Last edited on November 25, 2025/14 min read
Email remains one of the most effective ways to reach and engage customers. It drives connection, conversion, and loyalty—but every campaign starts with getting that first open.
This guide explains what email open rates are, how to calculate and interpret them, what good performance looks like across different industries, and how to improve results through data, testing, and automation.
Contents
Email open rate is the percentage of delivered emails that a recipient opens. It measures how many people viewed a message after it reached their inbox and is one of the most common indicators of email engagement.
Open rates are typically tracked using an invisible pixel embedded in each message, which loads when a subscriber opens the email. This gives marketers a simple way to understand how many subscribers are actively engaging with their campaigns.
While open rate doesn’t reveal what recipients do after they open, it serves as the first signal of audience interest and campaign performance.
Email open rate is calculated by dividing the number of unique opens by the number of emails delivered, then multiplying by 100 to get a percentage.
Formula: (Unique opens ÷ Delivered emails) × 100
“Delivered emails” refers to the total number of messages that reached an inbox, excluding any that bounced due to an invalid email address or temporary delivery issue.
For example, if you send 10 emails and two bounce, the number of delivered emails is eight. If four of those are opened, your open rate is (4 ÷ 8) × 100 = 50%.
Open rate measures how many recipients opened an email after it was successfully delivered. It’s an indicator of initial engagement—showing whether the subject line, sender name, and timing were compelling enough to prompt an open.
However, it’s important to understand what open rate doesn’t capture. It doesn’t show whether a recipient read the full message, clicked a link, or converted.
Open rates help marketers track audience engagement trends over time and understand how their email marketing campaigns are performing in real conditions. Changes in this metric can reveal much more than whether a single campaign performed well—they highlight shifts in audience behavior, content relevance, and deliverability. It also helps teams understand how engagement trends are changing across their email subscriber base.
A sudden drop may indicate fatigue, blocking, or email content that’s no longer resonating. A steady rise often points to improved targeting, better timing, or increased brand trust.
While privacy features like Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) affect individual tracking accuracy, aggregate open rate data still offers valuable directional insight. By watching how open rates evolve, marketers can spot issues early and guide optimization across subject lines, segmentation, and send strategy.
Open rates are an essential step toward successful email marketing.
There’s no single number that defines a “good” open rate, but most data puts the average email open rate between 30% and 40%—and recent email marketing benchmarks show an overall average of 35.9%, with results varying by audience type and industry.
Open rates differ slightly depending on who you’re reaching. According to the same 2025 Email Benchmarking Report, B2B emails average around 37.4%, while B2C messages sit closer to 40%. Consumer audiences often engage more frequently with brands they’ve chosen to hear from, especially in sectors like retail and travel.
Industry context matters. Some sectors naturally see higher engagement because messages are more relevant or time-sensitive, while others face tougher competition in crowded inboxes. These are the average email open rates across different industries:
Comparing performance against your own historical data—rather than a broad average—will always give the clearest picture of progress.
Email continues to deliver strong engagement results. People who receive brand emails are 89% more likely to make a purchase than those reached only through other channels. Improving open rates helps more customers see your message and act on it.
Open rate tracks how many people view your email. Click-through rate (CTR) measures how many recipients click a link out of all deliveries, while click-to-open rate (CTOR) focuses on how many click after opening. Together, they give a more complete picture of engagement: open rate shows attention, CTR measures reach, and CTOR reflects how effectively the content drives action once opened.
Open rate might look like a straightforward metric, but the reality behind it is far more complex. From tracking limitations to shifting user privacy standards, several factors can distort how open rates are recorded—and how they should be interpreted.
An open is only recorded when the tracking pixel in an email loads successfully. If a user blocks images, reads in preview mode, or receives plain-text emails, that open isn’t captured. Many corporate systems and personal security tools now block or remove tracking pixels altogether, meaning even highly engaged subscribers might never register as “opens.”
This creates a wide margin for error. Opens can be missed when tracking is blocked, or overcounted when privacy tools generate false opens through proxy servers.
Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) dramatically changed how marketers read open rates. By routing emails through Apple’s servers, MPP obscures individual user data and can inflate open numbers artificially. This can make your open rates look healthy on the surface but it doesn’t reflect true engagement.
Other mailbox providers are moving in similar directions, further blurring the line between real and reported opens. These changes protect users, but they make open rate data harder to rely on in isolation.
Because of these inconsistencies, open rate should be viewed as a directional indicator—not an absolute measure of success. Benchmarks can offer useful context, but they shouldn’t be treated as a rule.
A “good” open rate for one brand may be unachievable for another, even within the same industry. Factors like audience size, send frequency, content type, and deliverability all shift the numbers. Comparing against your own historical performance gives the clearest picture of how engagement is trending.
Industry averages often mask the nuances behind each campaign. A small niche retailer with a loyal subscriber base may naturally outperform a large enterprise sending millions of promotional emails. Conversely, a high open rate might be inflated by MPP or bot activity, creating a false sense of success.
Rather than chasing a universal benchmark, it’s more effective to look at how your open rates move over time—and in relation to other metrics such as click-through rate (CTR), click-to-open rate (CTOR), and conversions. Together, these provide a more accurate view of audience engagement.
Strong open rates come from a mix of strategy, consistency, and smart use of data. Every element—from the subject line to email content, to send time—plays a part in whether your message gets noticed.
The tactics below outline practical, evidence-based ways to increase open rates, improve engagement, and drive more successful email marketing results.
For brands using automation and AI, customer engagement platforms like Braze can take these improvements further by personalizing timing, content, and delivery at scale.
Across industries, brands use Braze to reach customers with timely, relevant, and personalized messages that drive stronger engagement. From fitness communities to travel platforms, these examples show how brands used Braze to improve open rates.
With more than a million members and a strong sense of community, PureGym needed a better way to keep people informed about local gym updates. Working with Braze and ConsultMyApp, the brand built an automated, data-driven email system that delivered the right messages at the right time—boosting engagement and satisfaction across its nationwide network.
PureGym, the UK’s largest gym chain, wanted to maintain its community-first “Everybody Welcome” ethos while communicating key updates—like gym closures, refurbishments, or class changes—to over a million members. Manual scheduling and location-based filtering made it difficult to send accurate, timely updates at scale.
Working with Braze and ConsultMyApp, PureGym built the Gym Communications Manager (GCM), a centralized system powered by API-triggered campaigns and dynamic segmentation. This setup allowed the team to send responsive, location-specific messages to members based on gym activity, gender, and engagement patterns—all without manual coordination.
PureGym saw measurable improvements in both efficiency and engagement:
To improve the effectiveness of its global email marketing, BlaBlaCar set out to test whether a simple change—the sender name—could impact engagement. With Braze Canvas, the team ran structured experiments that proved personalization starts before the email is even opened.
BlaBlaCar wanted to improve open rates and validate whether changing the sender name could make their emails more personal and effective across their global audience.
Using Braze Canvas, the team ran A/B tests across France and Russia, comparing brand-only sender names to first-name variants, and evaluating the impact of name popularity and gender perception. Over two months, they built a testing framework that automated setup and reporting—turning gut instinct into measurable insight.
BlaBlaCar’s experiment delivered clear, actionable insights:
For RVezy, customer communication is part of the adventure. The RV rental marketplace uses Braze to personalize messages across every stage of the journey—from booking to road trip and beyond—keeping travelers informed and inspired while driving exceptional open and click rates.
RVezy faced a common engagement hurdle: managing personalized, accurate communications across two distinct audiences—owners and renters—while keeping every message relevant and timely. Multiple point solutions made consistency, deliverability, and personalization a challenge.
RVezy unified its communication ecosystem within Braze, using Canvas, Connected Content, and Message Extras to power real-time, personalized messages across email, push, and SMS. With these solutions, RVezy could dynamically include booking details, trip timing, and customer-specific recommendations. Integrations with Segment, Zendesk, and cloud partners created a 360° view of the customer journey, enabling both marketing and service teams to act on the same data.
RVezy’s personalized engagement strategy delivered standout performance gains:
With Braze, brands can now leverage AI decisioning, automation, and real-time data to send emails that are more timely, relevant, and effective.
The BrazeAI Decisioning Studio™ applies machine learning to predict when each person is most likely to open an email and automatically schedules delivery at that moment. This precision helps brands reach inboxes when attention is highest, improving open and engagement rates without adding extra workload for teams.
Braze uses real-time behavioral data to adjust subject lines, content blocks, and offers for every recipient. The system learns from ongoing interactions, using each send to refine future performance. This creates a continuous feedback loop that helps campaigns stay relevant and responsive to changing customer habits.
Braze connects email data with channels like in-app messaging, SMS, and push notifications, enabling marketers to see how open rate trends fit within the full customer journey. Insights from one channel can shape strategy across others, creating more cohesive and consistent experiences that drive stronger long-term engagement.
Email open rate remains a valuable signal of audience attention, even as privacy updates and new technology reshape how it’s measured. The key is to interpret it in context—alongside click, conversion, and retention data—to understand the full story of engagement.
Marketers who focus on clear messaging, consistent testing, and smart automation will see the strongest results. With Braze, teams can take that a step further—using real-time data and AI decisioning to adapt campaigns automatically, reach customers when they’re most responsive, and build lasting connections across every stage of the journey.
A good open rate for email typically falls between 30% and 40%, depending on your industry, audience, and campaign type. B2C campaigns often sit slightly higher than B2B.
Open email rates provide a useful signal of engagement but aren’t always fully accurate. Privacy tools like Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) can inflate results, while image blocking can cause underreporting. Use open rates to identify trends rather than exact figures.
It’s best to review and clean your list every three to six months. Remove or re-engage inactive subscribers to protect deliverability and maintain accurate engagement metrics.
Send time still matters for open rates. Even with automation, timing influences visibility. Reviewing past campaign data or using tools like Braze Intelligent Timing helps identify when your audience is most likely to engage.
Mobile now accounts for the majority of email opens. That means short subject lines, clear preview text, and responsive design are essential for strong open and click performance.
Click-through rate (CTR) measures how many people clicked a link out of all emails delivered. Click-to-open rate (CTOR) measures how many clicked after opening. CTR shows overall engagement, while CTOR indicates how well your content motivates action once opened.
Yes. A 30% open rate is generally considered solid performance across most industries and suggests healthy engagement with your audience.
A 20% open rate can still be acceptable depending on your sector and campaign type. Review your results over time and against your own benchmarks to see if engagement is improving or declining.
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