While you know you shouldn't measure the success of your email marketing programs against results achieved by other businesses, learning about average open, click-through and conversion rates can be a useful tool. You might identify areas for potential improvement—or get a thrill out of learning you outperform other companies in certain categories.

A short video from The 60 Second Marketer offers some guidelines:

• Though many marketers see an open rate of between 20 percent and 30 percent, there are outliers. For instance, while open rates for email from publishing companies might exceed 40 percent, those from entertainment companies might be closer to 15 percent. "Open rates increase the more you segment your opt-in email distribution list," notes the video.
• Click-through rates often fall between four percent and five percent.
• Conversion rates can range from 0.1 percent to 1.5 percent.

The Po!nt: Take benchmarks like these with a grain of salt. "Of course, the only real way to see if your email marketing is successful is to develop an A/B Split Test for one of your campaigns," says Jamie Turner. "Once you've done one test, you'll take the winner (i.e. the Control) and test against that one until you find a new winner."

Source: The 60 Second Marketer. Click here for the full video.

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