What is a good email open rate for an ecommerce brand?

Why does your email open rate matter less than it used to?

Campaigns are one of the main ways a brand brings existing customers back, so judging them on a number Apple inflates means judging that work on noise. Apple Mail Privacy Protection, which arrived with iOS 15 in 2021, can load an email in the background, tracking pixel included, so the email counts as opened whether or not anyone reads it. In Everboost’s panel the median ecommerce campaign recorded a 53% open rate, and the middle half of brands sat between 49% and 59%. Numbers like that say more about which email app your customers use than about your subject line.

That does not make open rate useless. A sudden fall still flags a deliverability problem. It does mean open rate is the weakest number for judging whether a campaign worked.

What do the 2026 ecommerce benchmarks look like?

These figures come from Everboost’s 2026 ecommerce email panel: 8,702 email campaigns, each delivered to at least 500 people, sent between 1 November 2025 and 31 October 2026 by 36 direct-to-consumer brands whose Klaviyo accounts we have worked in or audited, including campaigns sent before or without our involvement, analysed together with no brand identified. They span health and wellness, personal care, pet and other categories, selling in the UK, US, Europe and Australia. Resends to non-openers are excluded. Each figure is the median of each brand’s own median, so one large sender cannot skew the result.

Metric (per campaign)	Panel median	Middle half of brands
Open rate	53%	49% to 59%
Unsubscribe rate	0.29%	0.23% to 0.40%
Spam complaint rate	0.01%	0.006% to 0.015%
Bounce rate	0.17%	0.10% to 0.24%

They are all the campaigns that met the criteria in the period, as of November 2026, not a selection of good ones.

How do these numbers compare with Klaviyo’s benchmarks?

Klaviyo publishes its own 2026 benchmarks from more than 205,000 brands: campaigns average a 31% open rate, and health and beauty campaigns 30.5%. This panel’s median of 53% is well above that. Klaviyo’s page does not state the time window or how its averages are calculated, though it notes that Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates opens. This panel is the median of each brand’s own median, so treat the gap as a difference in method rather than a verdict on either. Everboost reads both as reference points and judges each brand against its own trend.

The practical point is the same whichever benchmark you use: open rate tells you whether emails are arriving, not whether they worked.

Is a 20%, 30% or 45% open rate good?

It depends on whose benchmark you use and how opens are counted. As a rough guide:

• Below Klaviyo’s 31% campaign average: check deliverability first: inbox placement, sender reputation and whether you are emailing old, unengaged addresses.
• 31% to 49%: above Klaviyo’s published average but below this panel’s middle half. Compare with your own trend before you change anything.
• 49% to 59%: this panel’s middle half. Look at clicks and revenue, not opens.
• Above 59%: above this panel’s middle half. Apple Mail Privacy Protection can push rates this high, so it is not proof that the content worked.

Everboost treats a sudden fall in open rate as an alarm to check deliverability, not as a verdict on the campaign.

What should you judge campaigns on instead?

Clicks, orders and revenue, compared with your own previous campaigns to the same audience. Automatic opens do not create clicks or orders, so those numbers reflect what people actually did. They also depend heavily on who a campaign goes to: a send to recent, engaged buyers and a send to the whole list should not be judged against the same number, so the most useful benchmark is your own last few campaigns to a similar audience.

Even clicks are not the goal. A campaign with a low click rate to a high-value segment can earn more than a campaign with a high click rate to a cheap one, which is why Everboost reads every campaign on the revenue it brings in alongside its clicks. For what goes with more clicks in the subject line, see our subject line analysis.

What is a good unsubscribe and spam complaint rate?

The panel median unsubscribe rate was 0.29% per campaign, and the middle half of brands sat between 0.23% and 0.40%. Complaints matter more than unsubscribes, because they affect whether your next email arrives. Google’s sender guidelines ask senders to stay below a 0.1% spam rate and never reach 0.3%, and the panel median was 0.01%.

If your spam complaint rate is creeping towards 0.1%, fix who you are sending to before you fix anything in the email itself. The quickest wins are usually suppressing people who have not clicked or bought in months and sending less often to the least engaged. For what that work looks like in practice, see how Everboost cut the share of Salt Grooming’s sends landing in spam by 57% in our Salt Grooming case study.

Do resends to non-openers still work?

They can, but the open-based logic behind them has weakened. Across 519 resends in the panel, brand by brand, resends earned noticeably less revenue per email than originals in 13 of 31 brands and about the same or more in the other 18, so there is no general rule; it depends on the brand and the moment.

As of November 2026, resends still earn their place on big moments such as launches and sales. If you use them, exclude recent purchasers and anyone who has already clicked, because with automatic opens “non-openers” includes people who did see the first email. Judge them on the revenue they add, which is how Everboost reads them. Our Smart Sending guide covers how Klaviyo’s frequency cap interacts with resends.

How should you use these benchmarks?

Everboost uses these numbers as a sense check, not a target. A benchmark tells you whether you are in the normal range; your own trend tells you whether you are improving.

Three practical rules follow from the panel data:

1. Stop reporting open rate as a headline. Keep it as a deliverability alarm and watch for sudden drops.
2. Judge campaigns on clicks and revenue by audience. A campaign to engaged buyers and a campaign to the whole list should not be judged against the same number.
3. Watch complaints more than unsubscribes. Complaints affect whether your next email arrives at all.

For when to send, see our send-time analysis. For what a healthy repeat-buyer base looks like alongside these campaign numbers, see our guide to a good repeat purchase rate. If you would like a retention agency to look at your campaign numbers against this panel, book an intro call.