Email Marketing Benchmarks: Open, Click, Bounce, Unsubscribe and Spam Rates

Across the major published reports, the typical email campaign gets an open rate of roughly 20% to 44% (depending mostly on whether Apple's automatic opens are counted), a click rate of about 1.5% to 3.5%, an unsubscribe rate of 0.1% to 0.5%, and a bounce rate of around 2%, with spam complaints well under 0.1%. The table below gives every figure with its source, period and caveats, followed by what to do if you're on the wrong side of each.

We only included numbers we could read on each provider's own page in October 2026. Constant Contact's published averages page no longer loaded when we checked, so it's left out. For deeper dives into two of these metrics, see email open rate benchmarks and email bounce rate benchmarks; this post is the one-page reference across all five.

The reference table

Metric	Figure	Source	Data period	Notes
Open rate	20.73% (excl. Apple MPP) / 33.87% (incl.)	Brevo	2025, 175,000+ customers	Publishes both figures
	43.46%	MailerLite	Dec 2024 to Nov 2025, 3.6M campaigns	Median, not mean
	39.64%	GetResponse	2023, 4.4B messages	Report's tables give different "all" rows
	35.63%	Mailchimp	Updated Dec 2023	Campaigns to 1,000+ subscribers
	31% (campaigns)	Klaviyo	2026 page	Ecommerce senders
	21.5%	Campaign Monitor	2021, 100B+ emails	Mostly before Apple MPP
Click rate	3.25%	GetResponse	2023	Click-to-open 8.62%
	2.62%	Mailchimp	Dec 2023
	2.3%	Campaign Monitor	2021	Click-to-open 10.5%
	2.27%	Brevo	2025	Based on total recipients
	2.09%	MailerLite	2025	Click-to-open 6.81%
	1.69% (campaigns)	Klaviyo	2026 page	5.58% for automated flows
Bounce rate	2.33%	GetResponse	2023	Only one of these reports to publish an average
	Healthy under 1%; over 2% needs attention	Klaviyo help	Guidance	A target band, not an average
	"Aim for a total bounce rate below 2%"	Brevo	Guidance
	Suspension possible at 5% hard bounces in a month	HubSpot	Policy	A limit, not a benchmark
Unsubscribe rate	0.46%	Brevo	2025	Top 10% of senders: 0.05%
	0.22%	Mailchimp	Dec 2023
	0.22%	MailerLite	2025	Median
	0.15%	GetResponse	2023
	0.1%	Campaign Monitor	2021
	Healthy under 0.3%; over 1% needs attention	Klaviyo help	Guidance
Spam complaint rate	"below 0.01%"	GetResponse	2023
	Healthy under 0.01%; over 0.05% needs attention	Klaviyo help	Guidance
	Suspension possible at 0.1% in a month	HubSpot	Policy	"one per every 1000 emails sent"
	Below 0.3%; aim below 0.1%	Google	Requirement	Measured in Postmaster Tools

Two other figures are useful context. Brevo's page reproduces inbox placement data from Validity's 2025 Email Deliverability Benchmark: 87.2% of mail reached the inbox at Gmail, 86.0% at Yahoo, 76.3% at Apple and 75.6% at Microsoft. And Brevo reports that automation and transactional emails average a 30.63% open rate and a 7.39% click rate, well above its campaign figures, which is a reminder to benchmark campaigns and automations separately.

Open rate: what to do if you're below

First check whether you're comparing like with like; most "low" open rates are a benchmark mismatch. Brevo's two figures, 20.73% and 33.87%, come from the same customers in the same year. The only difference is whether Apple Mail Privacy Protection's automatic opens are counted. If your platform filters them and the benchmark doesn't, you'll look 13 points worse for no reason.

If you're still well below a like-for-like benchmark:

• Check placement before copy. A low open rate at one mailbox provider usually means spam-folder placement there. Segment results by provider; see segmenting by mailbox provider.
• Check the list. A list carrying people who stopped reading months ago drags opens down every send. A sunset policy removes them, after a re-engagement campaign.
• Then test the sender name and subject line, one change at a time.
• Check the tab, not just the folder. Promotions placement isn't spam; see the Gmail Promotions tab.

Mailchimp's own MPP FAQ puts it plainly: "Clicks and purchases are stronger signs of engagement than opens, and aren't impacted by Apple MPP." Use opens as a trend line for your own list, not as a score against others.

Click rate: what to do if you're below

Click rate is the most comparable engagement metric, but confirm the denominator. Brevo divides clicks by total recipients. Click-to-open divides by opens, so it moves when open tracking changes. GetResponse's 3.25% click rate and 8.62% click-to-open describe the same campaigns from two angles.

If you're below:

• One clear primary link usually beats several competing ones.
• Segment. Brevo's industry table runs from 3.53% in government and public administration down to 1.87% in banking and financial services, so a blended benchmark can mislead you either way.
• Compare campaigns and automations separately. Klaviyo's flows click at 5.58% against 1.69% for campaigns.
• Check that links work and look trustworthy: visible, on your own domain, no shorteners.

Bounce rate: what to do if you're above

Bounces are the one metric where being worse than average has a direct, fixable cause: addresses that don't exist. The published lines cluster around 2%: Klaviyo calls over 2% "needs attention", Brevo says aim below 2%, and GetResponse's 2023 average was 2.33%. Platforms act at higher levels; HubSpot can suspend at 5% hard bounces in a month, and other platforms' limits are in bounce rate thresholds by platform.

If you're above:

1. Pause sends to the affected segment. See what to do after a high bounce rate.
2. Separate hard and soft bounces. Hard bounces get suppressed at once; soft ones get limited retries. Hard vs soft bounces explains which is which.
3. Verify the rest of the list before the next send, and check how your platform calculates the rate with how to calculate bounce rate.
4. Fix the source. Bounces usually trace back to signup typos, old imports or bought data; see how to clean an email list.

Unsubscribe rate: what to do if you're above

A rising unsubscribe rate is an early warning, and an unsubscribe is far better than a spam complaint. Most published averages sit between 0.1% and 0.5%. Klaviyo calls over 1% "needs attention"; HubSpot can suspend at 3% in a month.

MailerLite partly attributes its 2025 rise in unsubscribes to Gmail making it easier to unsubscribe without opening the email. That's a reason not to panic at a small rise, and a reason to make sure your own one-click unsubscribe works.

If you're above:

• Look at frequency first. A jump after you increased sends is the usual culprit.
• Check what people signed up for against what you're sending them.
• Offer a down-frequency option on the preference page.
• Don't hide the link. People who can't find it report the email as spam instead.

Spam complaint rate: what to do if you're above

Complaints carry the most weight with mailbox providers, and the thresholds are tiny. Google's line is 0.3%, with 0.1% as the target. HubSpot puts its suspension line at 0.1%, "one per every 1000 emails sent". Klaviyo's "healthy" band ends at 0.01%.

Google measures complaints against mail delivered to the inbox, so if much of your mail is already in spam, your measured rate can look deceptively low. Reading Google Postmaster Tools explains that trap.

If you're above:

1. Stop mailing people who haven't engaged recently.
2. Make unsubscribing obvious, in the header and the body.
3. Remind people why they're receiving the email, especially after a long gap.
4. Never import addresses that didn't opt in to you. See should you buy email lists.

If complaints have already damaged your reputation, follow the 30-day recovery plan.

Why the sources disagree

Most of the spread between reports comes from four things, none of which is your performance.

1. Apple Mail Privacy Protection

Brevo's methodology note explains that Apple MPP, active since September 2021, "pre-fetches emails and registers an 'open' even if the recipient never views the message." Campaign Monitor's 21.5% is from 2021, mostly before MPP; MailerLite's 43.46% is from 2025, well after. The 22-point gap between them is not a 22-point improvement in email.

2. B2B versus B2C, and industry mix

Each report describes its own customers. Klaviyo's are mostly ecommerce brands; Brevo's span public sector, nonprofit, retail and software. Brevo's own industry spread shows how much this matters: government and public administration opens at 34.19% (excluding MPP) while ecommerce opens at 15.50%. B2B lists also tend to bounce more as people change jobs; see B2B vs B2C email verification.

3. List quality and platform policy

Platforms with strict onboarding, double opt-in defaults or quick suspension remove their worst senders, which lowers their bounce and complaint averages. A platform's benchmark partly reflects who it lets send.

4. Formula and statistic

MailerLite reports medians; Brevo reports unweighted averages with outliers removed; others don't say. Click rate might be per recipient or per open. Even within single reports the numbers shift: Mailchimp's FAQ quotes a different open rate from its own table, and GetResponse's country and industry tables give different "all" rows. When you cite a benchmark, cite the table too.

How to use these numbers

Pick one benchmark that matches your audience and counting method, and spend most of your attention on your own trend. A practical routine:

1. For opens, use Brevo's MPP-excluded figure if your platform filters Apple opens, and the MPP-inclusive figure if it doesn't.
2. For clicks, use the benchmark from a platform whose customer mix resembles yours.
3. For bounces, unsubscribes and complaints, ignore averages and work to the strictest threshold that applies to you: your platform's, or Google's 0.1% target.
4. Compare each campaign against your own last three, by mailbox provider.

Bounces are the metric you can fix before you press send. SimpleVerifier verifies full lists on monthly plans (see pricing); the free list health check shows duplicates, typos and dead domains first, with no signup.