Let’s say the open rate of your recent campaign is 15%, and the click rate is 1%. You may wonder – is this normal? How does the number compare with industry average?
Here we compiled the open and click rate of about 2,000 campaigns in the past 6 years. The recipients are life science researchers. You may use it to gauge your campaign performance.
Average and standard deviation
The average unique open rate is 13.56% with standard deviation 7.5%; the average click rate is 0.85%, with standard deviation 1.2%. Please understand here we define the click rate as the number of unique clicks divided by the number of recipients. Some platforms may use a different definition – for example the number of clicks dividied by the number of opens – and that’s not what we use here.
Distribution plot
Performance look-up table
If you want to find out your ranking, you may use the following look-up table. For example, if your open rate is 20%, then you are top 16.3%; if your click rate is 2%, then you are top 9.7%.
| Open Rate | Top % How many campaigns are better? |
| 0% | 100.0% |
| 1% | 99.8% |
| 2% | 99.6% |
| 3% | 98.5% |
| 4% | 96.8% |
| 5% | 93.7% |
| 6% | 87.7% |
| 7% | 82.8% |
| 8% | 77.8% |
| 9% | 71.9% |
| 10% | 64.1% |
| 11% | 56.1% |
| 12% | 50.5% |
| 13% | 43.8% |
| 14% | 37.9% |
| 15% | 32.9% |
| 16% | 29.1% |
| 17% | 25.7% |
| 18% | 22.5% |
| 19% | 19.3% |
| 20% | 16.3% |
| 21% | 13.7% |
| 22% | 11.3% |
| 23% | 9.8% |
| 24% | 8.2% |
| 25% | 6.9% |
| 26% | 6.3% |
| 27% | 5.3% |
| 28% | 4.6% |
| 29% | 4.1% |
| 30% | 3.8% |
| Click Rate | Top % How many campaigns are better? |
| 0.0% | 100.0% |
| 0.1% | 92.2% |
| 0.2% | 77.4% |
| 0.3% | 65.0% |
| 0.4% | 55.1% |
| 0.5% | 47.0% |
| 0.6% | 39.8% |
| 0.7% | 34.3% |
| 0.8% | 29.1% |
| 0.9% | 25.7% |
| 1.0% | 22.8% |
| 1.1% | 20.4% |
| 1.2% | 18.6% |
| 1.3% | 17.4% |
| 1.4% | 16.2% |
| 1.5% | 14.6% |
| 1.6% | 13.0% |
| 1.7% | 12.0% |
| 1.8% | 11.3% |
| 1.9% | 10.7% |
| 2.0% | 9.7% |
| 2.1% | 8.9% |
| 2.2% | 8.1% |
| 2.3% | 7.6% |
| 2.4% | 7.0% |
| 2.5% | 6.6% |
| 2.6% | 6.5% |
| 2.7% | 6.2% |
| 2.8% | 5.7% |
| 2.9% | 5.4% |
| 3.0% | 5.3% |
| 3.1% | 5.2% |
| 3.2% | 4.9% |
| 3.3% | 4.5% |
| 3.4% | 4.3% |
| 3.5% | 4.1% |
| 3.6% | 3.9% |
| 3.7% | 3.6% |
| 3.8% | 3.3% |
| 3.9% | 3.1% |
| 4.0% | 3.1% |
| 4.1% | 2.7% |
| 4.2% | 2.5% |
| 4.3% | 2.5% |
| 4.4% | 2.4% |
| 4.5% | 2.3% |
| 4.6% | 2.1% |
| 4.7% | 1.9% |
| 4.8% | 1.7% |
| 4.9% | 1.7% |
| 5.0% | 1.7% |