Everyone wants a number.
What exactly is a good click rate for email marketing? What number tells you, confidently, that your campaigns are performing well and not falling flat? We love benchmarks because they make things easy to compare. One percentage to chase. One metric to judge success.
But here’s the catch: there’s no universal “good” click rate. What looks great for one business or email type might be underwhelming for another. A 2% click rate could be exceptional in one context and disappointing in a different scenario. The truth is, click rates only start to make sense when you factor in audience, industry, intent, and message type.
So instead of chasing a single magic benchmark, let’s break down how click rates work, what influences them, and what numbers you should realistically aim for.
What is A Good Click Rate for Email Marketing and How Does it Work?
Click rate measures the percentage of people who clicked at least one link in your email out of the total number of emails that were delivered.
Simple math. If you send 10,000 emails and 1,000 people click a link, that’s a 10% click rate.
This is different from click-through rate based on opens, which only counts people who opened the email first. Most platforms calculate click rate based on total delivered emails, not just opened ones. That’s the more conservative and useful metric for understanding actual engagement.
The tracking happens through redirects your email platform automatically inserts into your links. Every click gets recorded and attributed back to the specific email and recipient.
Click rate tells you whether your content and calls-to-action are compelling enough to drive action. Opens tell you whether your subject line worked. Clicks tell you whether the email itself worked.
That makes click rate arguably more valuable than open rate for most business goals. Someone can open your email out of curiosity and still do nothing. A click means they were interested enough to take the next step.
Why Industry Average CTR Metrics Are Mostly Useless?
You’ll find statistics saying the average email click rate is somewhere around 2% to 3% across industries.
That number is technically accurate and practically useless.
Click rates vary wildly based on what you’re sending and who you’re sending it to. A promotional email trying to drive purchases will get very different click rates than a content newsletter sharing interesting articles.
Publishing and media companies often see click rates above 5% or even into double digits because people subscribed specifically to read their content. Click the link, read the article. That’s the whole point of the email.
E-commerce promotional emails might see 1% to 2% click rates because not everyone is ready to buy when your email arrives, even if they’re interested in your products generally.
SaaS product emails tied to specific user actions can hit 10% to 50% click rates when they’re highly targeted and contextually relevant. You’re emailing someone about something they just did in your product, so engagement is naturally higher.
Comparing your e-commerce newsletter to a media company’s content email doesn’t tell you anything useful. You’re playing different games with different rules.
Even within the same industry, click rates depend on list quality, how often you email, what you’re asking people to do, and how well you know your audience.
What Actually Affects Your Click Rate?
Several factors determine whether people click or ignore your emails.
Email type matters enormously. Triggered emails responding to specific actions get much higher engagement than broadcast newsletters sent to everyone. Someone who just abandoned their cart is way more likely to click than someone receiving your weekly promotional blast.
Autoresponder sequences welcoming new subscribers typically see 20% to 30% open rates and decent click rates because people just opted in and are expecting to hear from you.
Regular newsletters sent to everyone get lower engagement because not every email is relevant to every person on your list at that particular moment.
Your industry and what you’re selling changes expectations. Content-driven businesses naturally get higher click rates because clicking is the main action you want. Product-based businesses need people to not just click but also buy, which is a higher bar.
Hobby and entertainment topics tend to get better engagement than purely commercial emails. People are more excited to read about their interests than to be sold to.
List quality is huge and often overlooked. If your list is full of inactive subscribers who haven’t engaged in months or years, your click rates will tank over time. Those ghost subscribers drag down your percentages even though they were never going to click anyway.
Clean your list regularly. Remove people who haven’t opened or clicked in six months or a year. Your click rate will improve and your deliverability will get better because you’re only emailing people who actually want to hear from you.
What you’re asking people to click on matters. A single clear call-to-action generally performs better than multiple competing links. Make it obvious what you want people to do and make that action worth their time. So, avoiding some commonly occurring email marketing mistakes is the first step toward better performance.
Personalization and segmentation improve click rates because you’re sending more relevant content to more targeted groups. Generic emails to your entire list will underperform compared to segmented emails tailored to specific interests or behaviors.
Expected Email CTR Differs with Campaign Types
Instead of asking what’s a good click rate generally, ask what’s good for the specific type of email you’re sending.
Content newsletters promoting blog posts or articles: 1% to 3% is pretty standard. If you’re getting above 3%, you’re doing well. Your audience is engaged and your content is resonating.
These numbers assume you’re sending to your full list. Segment down to people who’ve shown interest in specific topics and you might see 5% or higher.
Promotional emails trying to drive sales: 0.5% to 2% is realistic. Lower end if you’re emailing frequently or your offers aren’t particularly compelling. Higher end if you’ve got a highly engaged audience and genuinely good deals.
If someone’s telling you they consistently get 5% to 10% click rates on promotional emails, they either have an incredibly engaged list, are sending to a tiny segment, or are measuring something different than standard click rate.
Product activity emails tied to user behavior: 10% to 50% depending on how targeted and relevant they are. Email someone about something they literally just did in your product and click rates can be extremely high.
These work because the timing and context are perfect. You’re not interrupting them with random content. You’re helping them with something they’re actively engaged with.
One-to-one outreach emails: highly variable. If you’re doing genuine personalized outreach as part of sales or partnerships, you want these in the 10% to 50% range minimum. These aren’t mass emails. They’re individual communications where engagement should be much higher.
If your personal outreach emails are getting 2% click rates, something’s wrong with your targeting, messaging, or relevance.
Triggered and transactional emails: 20% to 50%+. These are emails people expect and need. Order confirmations, shipping notifications, password resets. Click rates should be high because people are looking for this information.
What to Optimize For Best Email Open Rates?
Stop obsessing over hitting some arbitrary click rate percentage.
Focus on whether your click rate is improving over time and whether the people clicking are taking the actions you want beyond just the click.
A 5% click rate that results in zero conversions is worse than a 2% click rate that consistently drives sales or signups.
Track the full funnel, not just the click. How many clicks turn into actual business results? That’s what matters.
Test different approaches and see what moves your specific numbers. Try different subject lines, different content structures, different calls-to-action, different sending times. Your audience will tell you what works through their behavior.
What works for someone else’s audience might not work for yours. Industry benchmarks are interesting, but your own data is what you should actually optimize against. Adopting proper email marketing practices, like A/B testing, is key to maximizing engagement.
Segment your list and send more targeted emails. This consistently improves click rates because relevance is the biggest driver of engagement. Stop sending everything to everyone and start sending the right things to the right people.
Clean your list regularly. Remove inactive subscribers so you’re measuring engagement among people who actually care, not dragging down your metrics with people who checked out months ago.
The Real Answer
A good click rate is one that’s improving and driving business results.
If you’re consistently getting 1% clicks on your content emails and those clicks turn into engaged readers and eventual customers, that’s good. If someone else gets 5% clicks but they’re all low-quality traffic that bounces immediately, that’s not necessarily better.
Context, industry, email type, and audience quality all matter more than hitting some generic benchmark. Focus on understanding your own baseline, testing improvements, and connecting clicks to actual business outcomes.
That’s email marketing that works, regardless of whether your click rate looks impressive compared to someone else’s completely different situation.
The Chief Author and Editor at Intothecommerce. As a seasoned expert in digital marketing, I direct the site’s strategic content and ensure every piece meets the highest industry standards. My insights drive our coverage on SEO, paid media, and cutting-edge marketing technology.
2 thoughts on “What is A Good Click Rate for Email Marketing?”
Pretty! This has been a really wonderful post. Many thanks for providing these details.
Clean and neatly presented, so this is the standard CTR, right? Many people on the internet are just hyping things.