Opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes and spam: what are good rates

Opens:

• Percentage of people who opened the email. Based on the number of people who displayed the images and those who clicked on a link within the email.
• Good open rates are between 20% – 40%, but senders who follow good email practices can hit an average of 60%. 
• You can affect open rates by being a recognized sender, writing a clear subject and having a good pre-header text.

Clicks:

• Percentage of people who clicked on one of the links in your email.
• Expected results are between 3% – 8%
• Boost your click rates by making the information easy to understand and give readers a clear call to action.

Bounces:

• A bounce occurs when a campaign is not delivered to a recipient.
• Major difference between “Hard” – ex. non-existing address – and “Soft”, temporary issue with mailbox or network.
• Hard bounces should never exceed 1%

Unsubscribes:

• A subscriber may no longer wish to receive emails from you. In this case, if they click on the ‘[UNSUBSCRIBE]’ link, they wilfully remove themselves from your list.
• Should be below 1%

Spam:

• The popular name for unsolicited commercial email. We can only measure the complaints for specific internet service providers but all internet service providers track SPAM complaints and the overall number of complaints affects your sender’s reputation.
• Should not exceed 0.10% – 0.25%