100+ Email Marketing Statistics for 2026: ROI, Open Rates, and AI Adoption

Email marketing statistics for 2026 show the channel still delivers the highest return on investment in digital marketing: $36 back for every $1 spent, according to Litmus. That return holds even as open rates get harder to trust, automation pulls further ahead of one-off campaigns, and AI moves from experiment to default workflow.

This page covers usage and volume, ROI and revenue, open and click benchmarks, automation and lifecycle flows, subject lines and personalization, AI adoption, and B2B performance.

Quick answer: Email marketing returns $36 for every $1 spent on average (Litmus, 2025), reaches 4.73 billion people worldwide (Radicati Group, 2026), and automated flows now generate 41% of email revenue from just 5.3% of sends (Klaviyo, 2026).

Key stats at a glance:

  • Email marketing ROI averages $36 for every $1 spent, rising to $45 for retail and ecommerce brands (Litmus State of Email, 2025).
  • 4.73 billion people use email worldwide in 2026, or 57% of the global population (Radicati Group, 2026).
  • Automated flows generate 41% of email revenue from 5.3% of sends, an 18x revenue-per-recipient edge over campaigns (Klaviyo, 2026).
  • The median email open rate reached 43.46% in 2025, up from 42.35% in 2024 across 3.6 million campaigns (MailerLite, 2026).
  • 50.7% of marketers believe AI-powered email is more effective than traditional approaches (Statista, 2026).

Email Usage and Volume Statistics

Email's reach keeps expanding even as newer channels compete for attention. These figures set the scale for everything that follows.

  1. 4.73 billion people worldwide use email in 2026, or 57% of the global population (Radicati Group, 2026, via EmailToolTester).
  2. That figure is projected to grow to 4.85 billion users by 2027 (Radicati Group, 2023-2027 report).
  3. Global email adoption has grown from 4.0 billion users in 2020, a rise of roughly 850 million people in six years (Radicati Group, 2020-2026 data).
  4. Radicati projects the worldwide email user base will keep expanding at roughly 3% a year (Radicati Group, 2023-2027 report).
  5. People and businesses sent and received an estimated 376 billion emails a day in 2026 (Statista, citing Radicati Group data, 2026).
  6. Daily email volume is forecast to climb to 408 billion messages by 2027 (Statista, 2026 forecast).
  7. Daily email volume has grown from roughly 269 billion in 2017, an increase of about 40% over nine years (Statista, 2026).
  8. The average email user holds 1.86 email accounts, putting the estimated worldwide total at roughly 8.3 billion personal accounts (EmailToolTester analysis of Radicati data, 2026).
  9. Apple holds 62.26% of the global email client market as of July 2026, ahead of Gmail at 27.03% (Litmus Email Analytics, 2026).
  10. The United States sends more email than any other country, at roughly 9.7 billion messages a day; Germany and Ireland follow at around 8.5 billion each (Statista, 2026).
  11. An average email user receives about 80.6 emails a day, and roughly 49% of daily email volume is expected to be spam (Radicati Group data, via EmailToolTester analysis, 2026).
  12. 88% of email users check their inbox every day, and 39% check it three to five times a day (ZeroBounce Email Statistics Report, 2026).
  13. Employees spend an average of 11 hours a week managing and organizing email, close to 28% of a typical working week (Microsoft workplace research, cited via EmailToolTester, 2026).
  14. 85% of emails are read on a smartphone first but answered on a computer later, meaning most messages get read twice before a reply is sent (Microsoft workplace research, cited via EmailToolTester, 2026).

Global email usage, 2020-2027

Metric

2020

2024

2026

2027 (forecast)

Email users worldwide

4.0 billion

~4.4 billion

4.73 billion

4.85 billion

Daily emails sent/received

~320 billion

~361 billion

376 billion

408 billion

Share of world population using

email

~52%

~55%

57%

~58%

Source: Radicati Group Email Statistics Report (2020-2027 editions), Statista.

None of this suggests email is coasting on inertia. The user base is still growing faster than the world's population, a multi-year climb also visible in long-run tracking data from Statista, and daily volume keeps climbing even as marketers worry aloud about inbox fatigue.

For anyone weighing channel investment, the raw reach argument for email has only gotten stronger since 2020.

Email Marketing ROI and Revenue Statistics

ROI is the number every budget conversation about email eventually comes back to, and it remains hard for any other channel to match.

  1. Email marketing returns $36 for every $1 spent on average, the highest ROI of any digital channel Litmus tracks (Litmus State of Email, 2025).
  2. Some cross-provider syntheses put the practical ceiling closer to $42 for every $1 spent once retail-heavy datasets are included (Litmus and DMA benchmark data, 2026).
  3. Retail and ecommerce brands see a stronger-than-average return, at $45 for every $1 spent (Litmus State of Email, 2025).
  4. Omnisend's own merchants on paid plans averaged $79 back for every $1 spent across email, SMS, and push combined in 2025 (Omnisend internal merchant data, 2026).
  5. In the UK, the DMA measured an average return of £42 for every £1 spent back in 2019, a figure still cited as the region's historical benchmark since no comparable UK-specific study has replaced it (DMA Marketer Email Tracker, 2019).

Email marketing ROI by source

Source

Reported ROI

Date

Scope/method note

Litmus State of Email

$36 per $1

2025

Cross-industry average, global respondents

Litmus State of Email

$45 per $1

2025

Retail/ecommerce segment only

Omnisend internal data

$79 per $1

2025

Omnisend paid-plan merchants; email, SMS, and push combined

DMA Marketer Email Tracker

£42 per £1

2019

UK market only; not re-measured since

Figures differ by region, channel mix, and which businesses were sampled, not by a single "true" ROI number.

  1. 55% of companies report an email marketing ROI between 10:1 and 50:1 (Litmus State of Email, 2025).
  2. 30% of marketers globally rate email as their highest-ROI marketing channel, and another 43% rate it as medium ROI (Statista digital marketing channel survey, cited via Omnisend, 2026).
  3. Email ranks as the most effective marketing channel for 41% of marketing professionals, well ahead of social media and paid search, which tie for second at 16% each (Litmus State of Email Workflows Report, cited via Omnisend, 2026).
  4. Nearly 50% of consumers made a purchase directly from an email in the past year (Marigold Global Consumer Trends Index, 2024, cited via Omnisend, 2026).
  5. Email outperformed banner ads and SMS marketing by 108% on effectiveness in the same study, and beat organic social posts by 13% and social ads by 11% (Marigold Global Consumer Trends Index, 2024).
  6. Email click-to-conversion rates grew 27.6% year over year in 2024 (Omnisend 2025 Ecommerce Marketing Report).
  7. Click-to-conversion jumped again in 2025, rising 53% year over year from 5.9% to 9%, meaning fewer clicks but far more of them converted (Omnisend 2026 Ecommerce Marketing Report).
  8. The global email marketing software market is projected to grow from $12.33 billion in 2024 to $17.9 billion by 2027 (Statista Digital Market Outlook, 2026).
  9. Order and shipping confirmation emails convert 22 times better than standard promotional campaigns (Omnisend Email, SMS and Push Report, cited 2026).

Whichever ROI figure a business lands on, the pattern underneath is consistent: email keeps outperforming paid channels on a cost basis, and the gap widens further for ecommerce brands that lean on automation rather than one-off sends.

Email Open Rate and Click Rate Benchmarks

Open rate is the most quoted and least trusted metric in email marketing, largely because Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates it. Click rate and click-to-open rate (CTOR) are the more reliable engagement signals.

  1. The median email open rate across 3.6 million campaigns was 43.46% in 2025, up slightly from 42.35% in 2024 (MailerLite 2026 Benchmark Report).
  2. The median email click rate across the same dataset was 2.09% in 2025, up from 2.00% in 2024 (MailerLite 2026 Benchmark Report).
  3. Median click-to-open rate reached 6.81% in 2025, up from 5.63% in 2024 (MailerLite 2026 Benchmark Report).
  4. The median unsubscribe rate more than doubled year over year, from 0.08% in 2024 to 0.22% in 2025, a shift largely attributed to Gmail's one-click unsubscribe rollout (MailerLite 2026 Benchmark Report).
  5. Klaviyo's dataset of over 183,000 ecommerce brands puts the average campaign open rate lower, at 31%, with the top 10% of performers hitting 45.1% (Klaviyo 2026 Benchmark Report).
  6. Klaviyo's average campaign click rate across all industries is 1.69%, versus 5.58% for automated flow emails, a 3x gap (Klaviyo 2026 Benchmark Report).

Why "average open rate" ranges from 31% to 43%

Source

Open rate

Date

Scope/method note

MailerLite

43.46% (median)

2025

3.6 million campaigns, 181,000+ accounts, 46 industries (creators, SMBs, agencies)

Klaviyo

31% (average)

2026

183,000+ brands, ecommerce-only senders

Omnisend

30.7% (average)

2025

Ecommerce-only, Omnisend's own merchant base

The gap comes from sender mix, not a disagreement about what "open" means: ecommerce-only datasets skew lower because retail sends more frequently to broader, less-engaged lists.

  1. Religion (55.71%), hobbies (53.25%), and non-profit (52.38%) recorded the highest open rates of any industry in MailerLite's 46-industry breakdown; travel and transportation was lowest at 30.10% (MailerLite 2026 Benchmark Report).
  2. Legal emails had the highest click rate of any industry at 4.90%, followed by manufacturing (4.22%) and media (4.10%); politics ranked lowest at 0.83% (MailerLite 2026 Benchmark Report).
  3. Manufacturing led click-to-open rate at 14.82%, with legal close behind at 14.72%; politics again ranked lowest at 2.96% (MailerLite 2026 Benchmark Report).

Email open, click, and click-to-open rate by industry

Industry

Open rate

Click rate

Click-to-open rate

Religion

55.71%

2.95%

7.58%

Hobbies

53.25%

3.3%

8.45%

Non-profit

52.38%

2.9%

8.24%

Legal

42.58%

4.9%

14.72%

Manufacturing

37.36%

4.22%

14.82%

Media

42.97%

4.1%

12.92%

Retail

37.47%

1.27%

4.51%

E-commerce

32.67%

1.07%

4.01%

Politics

47.19%

0.83%

2.96%

Travel and

transportation

30.1%

1.68%

6.34%
  1. Australia recorded the highest regional open rate at 47.69%, while LATAM was lowest at 31.97% (MailerLite 2026 Benchmark Report).

Email benchmarks by region

Region

Open rate

Click rate

Click-to-open rate

Australia

47.69%

2.82%

8.30%

US and Canada

44.49%

2.14%

6.73%

Europe

45.08%

2.04%

6.46%

Africa

36.53%

2.29%

7.82%

Asia

32.54%

1.23%

5.21%

LATAM

31.97%

1.40%

6.56%

  1. Automated flow emails deliver roughly 3x the click rate of one-off campaigns, 5.58% versus 1.69% (Klaviyo 2026 Benchmark Report).
  2. Automated flows convert at 13x the rate of campaigns on placed orders, 2.11% versus 0.16% (Klaviyo 2026 Benchmark Report).
  3. Top-performing brands, the top 10% by placed order rate, hit 4.3% on flows, more than double the 2.11% average (Klaviyo 2026 Benchmark Report).
  4. Food and beverage brands post the highest flow placed order rate of any Klaviyo-tracked vertical, at 2.46% (Klaviyo 2026 Benchmark Report).

Campaign vs. automated flow performance

Metric

Campaigns

Automated flows

Flow advantage

Open rate

31%

Not separately reported

n/a

Click rate

1.69%

5.58%

3.3x

Placed order rate

0.16%

2.11%

13.2x

Top 10% placed order rate

0.36%

4.3%

11.9x

  1. GetResponse's own 2023 benchmark data sets the average bounce rate across industries at 2.33% (GetResponse Email Marketing Benchmarks, 2023).
  2. Automated emails ended 2023 with a 42.1% open rate and a 5.4% click rate, both well above campaign-level averages that year (Omnisend Email, SMS and Push Report, 2023).
  3. Open rates rose for a fifth consecutive year in Omnisend's ecommerce dataset, climbing from 26.6% in 2024 to 30.7% in 2025 even as click rates declined (Omnisend 2026 Ecommerce Marketing Report).
  4. Automated emails in that same dataset reached a 38% open rate and generated $2.87 per email sent, compared to $0.18 per email for standard campaigns (Omnisend 2026 Ecommerce Marketing Report).

The takeaway that survives all three datasets, despite their different open-rate baselines, is the same: automation consistently outperforms one-off campaigns on click rate, conversion, and revenue per send, regardless of which provider's numbers a business is comparing itself against.

Email Automation and Lifecycle Flow Statistics

Automated, behavior-triggered emails now do most of the heavy lifting in ecommerce email programs.

  1. Automated flows generate about 41% of total email revenue from just 5.3% of total sends (Klaviyo 2026 Benchmark Report).
  2. Revenue per recipient averages $1.94 for flows versus $0.11 for campaigns, an 18x gap (Klaviyo 2026 Benchmark Report).
  3. Back-in-stock flows deliver the highest revenue per recipient of any common automation, averaging $9.14 with a 6.72% conversion rate (Klaviyo 2026 Benchmark Report).
  4. Welcome series average $2.65 in revenue per recipient, ahead of browse abandonment at $1.07 and win-back flows at $0.84 (Klaviyo 2026 Benchmark Report).
  5. Abandoned cart, welcome, and browse abandonment together account for 87% of all automated ecommerce orders (Omnisend 2025 Ecommerce Marketing Report).
  6. One in three people who click an automated message go on to make a purchase, compared to one in 18 for scheduled campaigns (Omnisend 2025 Ecommerce Marketing Report).
  7. About one in two people who click an automated welcome or abandoned cart email complete a purchase (Omnisend 2025 Ecommerce Marketing Report).
  8. Automated birthday emails achieved a 43.3% open rate and a 14.3% click-to-conversion rate, the strongest occasion-based automation Omnisend measured that year (Omnisend Email, SMS and Push Report, 2023).
  9. Brands increased automated sending sharply year over year, led by back-in-stock messages, up 4x, welcome series, up 2.5x, and browse abandonment, up nearly 2x (Omnisend 2025 Ecommerce Marketing Report).
  10. Games (15.1%), food and drink (14.9%), and health (14.8%) were the highest-converting verticals for automated ecommerce email in 2025 (Omnisend 2026 Ecommerce Marketing Report).
  11. Birthday automations produced an average order value more than four times the overall average, at $744.37 (Omnisend 2026 Ecommerce Marketing Report).

Automated flow revenue per recipient

Flow type

Revenue per recipient

Conversion rate

Back-in-stock

$9.14

6.72%

Welcome series

$2.65

Not separately reported

Abandoned cart

$3.65

3.33%

Browse abandonment

$1.07

Not separately reported

Win-back

$0.84

Not separately reported

Campaign baseline

$0.11

Not separately reported

Automation has stopped being a nice-to-have add-on and become the primary revenue engine in ecommerce email.

Brands that still run mostly one-off campaigns are leaving a disproportionate share of achievable revenue on the table, since flows convert at a fraction of the sends.

Abandoned Cart and Holiday Email Statistics

Cart recovery and seasonal peaks are where email's revenue impact is easiest to see directly.

  1. Abandoned cart flows deliver the highest average revenue per recipient of any common flow, $3.65, with top 10% performers reaching $28.89 (Klaviyo Abandoned Cart Benchmark Report, 2024).
  2. Abandoned cart conversion rate averages 3.33% across Klaviyo's tracked dataset (Klaviyo Abandoned Cart Benchmark Report, 2024).
  3. High-AOV categories like hardware and home improvement see top-10% abandoned cart performers generate between $52.35 and $75.66 per recipient (Klaviyo Abandoned Cart Benchmark Report, 2024).
  4. The average conversion rate for welcome emails is 2.74%, versus 2.56% for abandoned cart emails, across Omnisend's broader ecommerce dataset (Omnisend Email, SMS and Push Report, cited 2026).
  5. Omnisend's most recent ecommerce report puts the average welcome email open rate at 33.79%, with a 2% conversion rate (Omnisend 2026 Ecommerce Marketing Report).
  6. Transactional email volume, order and shipping confirmations especially, jumps by about 33% on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday compared with a normal sending day (Mailgun BFCM Statistics Report, 2024).
  7. Black Friday emails achieved a 13% click-through rate and Cyber Monday emails reached a 15% open rate in the most recently measured holiday period, both slightly ahead of the year before (Mailgun BFCM Statistics Report, 2024).
  8. 61.3% of consumers prefer promotional messages by email during the holiday season, and 75.1% prefer email specifically for transactional messages like order confirmations (Sinch Black Friday Consumer Trends survey, 2024).
  9. Mobile accounts for 44.2% of email opens during the holiday season, higher than the rest-of-year average (Litmus holiday email engagement data, cited 2026).

Cart recovery and holiday sends both reward the same discipline: fast, relevant, behavior-triggered messages beat scheduled blasts even when inbox volume is at its highest. The revenue is concentrated in a handful of flow types, not spread evenly across a sending calendar.

Subject Line and Personalization Statistics

The subject line decides whether any of the content below it gets read at all, and personalization has moved well past inserting a first name.

  1. More than 80% of marketers report at least some performance improvement from subject line personalization (Litmus 2024 State of Email Trends Report, cited via Omnisend, 2026).
  2. Personalized subject lines lift open rates by 10-14% across industries (Omnisend analysis of subject-line benchmark data, 2026).
  3. 65% of marketers personalize subject lines in more than half of their campaigns, while 9% never personalize a subject line at all (Statista Email Personalization Rates Worldwide survey, 2023).
  4. 73% of marketers say emojis in a subject line meaningfully improve email performance (Litmus 2024 State of Email Trends Report, cited via Omnisend, 2026).
  5. 69% of recipients report an email as spam based on the subject line alone, without ever opening the message (Omnisend Subject Line Tester usage data, 2026).
  6. 80% of customers say they're more likely to purchase from brands that deliver personalized experiences across communications and shopping (Litmus 2024 State of Email Trends Report, cited via Omnisend, 2026).
  7. Marketing emails triggered by behavioral data generate 10 times more revenue than standard blast emails (Validity State of Email in 2024 report, cited via Omnisend, 2026).
  8. 90% of email marketing professionals say subscriber segmentation increases campaign performance (Litmus 2024 State of Email Trends Report, cited via Omnisend, 2026).
  9. Segmented email campaigns generate 760% more revenue than non-segmented campaigns (Campaign Monitor segmentation study, cited 2026).
  10. Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates than generic, non-personalized emails (Campaign Monitor personalization study, cited 2026).
  11. Recipient name, company, or other profile data is used to personalize 68% of marketing emails; past interaction history is used in 44% (Litmus 2023 State of Email Design Report).
  12. The most-opened campaigns in MailerLite's dataset are 45% more likely to use a subject line between 20 and 40 characters (MailerLite subject-line performance study, 2026).
  13. Top-performing campaigns are 28% more likely to use subscriber filters like groups or segments (MailerLite subject-line performance study, 2026).
  14. Top-performing campaigns are 23% more likely to use a custom preheader (MailerLite subject-line performance study, 2026).
  15. Top-performing campaigns are 21% more likely to include an emoji in the subject line (MailerLite subject-line performance study, 2026).
  16. A controlled test found personal sender names, a real person rather than just a brand name, produced 3.81% more opens than brand-only sender names (MailerLite A/B test data, 2026).

None of these tactics work in isolation. Segmentation, personalization, and subject line

discipline compound: a well-segmented list with a personalized, well-timed subject line consistently outperforms any single tactic applied to a generic blast.

AI in Email Marketing Statistics

AI adoption in email has moved from pilot projects to a standard part of the workflow for a majority of marketing teams.

  1. 50.7% of marketers across the US and Europe believe AI-powered email marketing is more effective than traditional approaches (Statista AI Effectiveness in Email Marketing survey, cited 2026).
  2. Marketers using AI for personalization report a revenue increase of more than 40% and a click-through rate of 13.44%, both ahead of non-AI campaigns (Statista, cited via Omnisend, 2026).
  3. 66% of marketers who use AI in email deploy it specifically to optimize send times (Statista AI in Email Marketing survey, cited 2026).
  4. 7 in 10 marketers in the US now use generative AI tools in their marketing work (Statista Generative AI in Marketing topic report, 2026).
  5. 34% of marketers who use generative AI apply it specifically to writing email copy, the most common single AI use case in email (Litmus 2023 State of Email Design Report, cited 2026).
  6. Among email marketers who use generative AI tools, 51% use general-purpose tools like ChatGPT; others turn to specialized tools such as Copy.ai (21%), Scalenut (19%), and Jasper (14%) (Litmus 2023 State of Email Design Report).
  7. 39% of email marketing professionals expect AI-driven hyper-personalization to have the single biggest impact on email automation in the coming years (eMarketer AI-driven email automation data, cited 2026).
  8. Content Marketing Institute's most recent B2B research finds 36% of B2B organizations now use AI-powered email tools for campaign optimization and personalized content (Content Marketing Institute 2025 B2B research).
  9. Nearly 70% of marketers expect up to half of their email operations to be AI-driven by the end of 2026 (Litmus State of Email 2025).

AI in email hasn't replaced the fundamentals; it has mostly accelerated them. Send-time optimization, subject line generation, and dynamic personalization are the applications marketers report actually using, and the revenue lift tracks closely with how much behavioral data feeds the model, not with AI adoption alone.

B2B Email Marketing Statistics

B2B buyers still prefer email over any other outreach channel, and newsletters remain the backbone of B2B content distribution.

  1. 71% of B2B marketers used email newsletters to nurture leads in the most recent 12-month period measured (Content Marketing Institute 2025 B2B research).
  2. 81% of B2B marketers use email newsletters as their primary form of content distribution, the single most-used B2B content channel (Content Marketing Institute 2025 B2B research).
  3. Email and email newsletters ranked among the top B2B distribution channels at 44% and 39% respectively, though in-person events (52%) and webinars (51%) were rated more effective per channel used (Content Marketing Institute 2025 B2B research).
  4. 42% of B2B marketers say email produces their best marketing results, consistent with the prior year's figure (Content Marketing Institute 2025 B2B research).
  5. 73% of B2B buyers say they prefer sellers contact them by email over any other channel (Sopro State of Prospecting 2025 report, cited via Omnisend, 2026).
  6. Email ranks as the second most effective B2B sales and marketing lead source overall, cited by 32% of B2B marketers (Sagefrog 2024 B2B Marketing Mix Report).
  7. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication have been mandatory for any sender pushing more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail and Yahoo accounts since February 2024 (Google and Yahoo bulk sender requirements, effective Feb. 2024).
  8. Bulk senders covered by those Gmail and Yahoo requirements must also keep reported spam complaints below 0.3% and offer one-click unsubscribe on every commercial message (Google and Yahoo bulk sender requirements, 2024).
  9. 55% of email opens occur on mobile devices, 26% on webmail, and 19% on desktop, based on more than 1.1 billion tracked opens (Litmus Email Analytics, 2026).
  10. iPhone alone accounts for roughly 60% of all mobile email opens (Litmus Email Analytics, 2026).
  11. Emails with images earn a 4.84% click rate on average, compared with 1.64% for text-only emails (GetResponse Email Marketing Benchmarks data, cited 2026).

For B2B teams, the practical floor set by the 2024 Gmail and Yahoo authentication rules has become table stakes rather than a competitive edge.

Programs that skip proper setup of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, the protocol that lets a domain owner tell receiving mail servers how to handle unauthenticated messages,according to Wikipedia, risk losing inbox placement entirely, which makes every other statistic on this page irrelevant for their sends.

How These Statistics Were Compiled

Every figure above traces to a primary release, a research organization's own summary of its data, or established trade press reporting the primary source by name.

Sources include the Radicati Group, Statista, Litmus, Klaviyo, MailerLite, Omnisend, Content Marketing Institute, GetResponse, DMA, Sopro, Sagefrog, Validity, Campaign Monitor, and Mailgun, plus government requirements from Google and Yahoo.

No figure here traces only to a content-farm listicle or an aggregator citing another aggregator. Wherever sources disagreed, we reported the range and named each source rather than averaging or picking one.

Every statistic is dated 2019 or later, and the large majority reflect 2024 through 2026 data collection; a small number of older figures (the 2019 UK DMA benchmark, the 2023 GetResponse and Omnisend flow-level data) are flagged in the text because no more recent equivalent has been published.

This page will be reviewed and re-verified within 12 months of publication.

Conclusion

Two patterns hold across every dataset in this roundup.

First, email's return on investment keeps outperforming other digital channels by a wide margin, whether the number cited is $36, $42, or $79 per dollar spent, and that gap widens further for ecommerce brands that lean on behavior-triggered automation instead of scheduled blasts.

Second, the metrics marketers have relied on for years, especially open rate, are getting noisier: Apple's privacy features and shifting unsubscribe mechanics mean click rate, click-to-open rate, and revenue per recipient now carry more diagnostic weight than a raw open percentage.

Going forward, the practical implication is straightforward. Programs that invest in list segmentation, a small set of well-built automated flows, and proper sender authentication are set up to keep outperforming programs that measure success by open rate alone.

AI adoption is accelerating that gap rather than closing it, since the biggest reported gains come from feeding more behavioral data into personalization and send-time decisions, not from AI use on its own.

FAQ

What is a good email open rate in 2026?

Across 3.6 million campaigns, the median open rate was 43.46% in 2025, though ecommerce-only datasets from Klaviyo and Omnisend put the average closer to 31% (MailerLite, 2026; Klaviyo, 2026). Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates raw open numbers, so click rate and click-to-open rate are more reliable for judging a specific campaign.

What is the average ROI of email marketing?

Litmus reports an average return of $36 for every $1 spent, rising to $45 for retail and ecommerce brands specifically (Litmus State of Email, 2025). Some merchant-specific datasets report considerably higher returns depending on channel mix and attribution window.

How many people use email worldwide?

4.73 billion people used email in 2026, or 57% of the world's population, and that figure is projected to reach 4.85 billion by 2027 (Radicati Group, 2026).

Do automated emails perform better than regular campaigns?

Yes, by a wide margin. Automated flows generate 41% of email revenue from just 5.3% of sends, with a 13x higher placed order rate and an 18x higher revenue per recipient than one-off campaigns (Klaviyo, 2026).

What percentage of marketers use AI for email marketing?

7 in 10 marketers in the US use generative AI tools in their marketing work, and 34% of those who use generative AI apply it specifically to writing email copy (Statista, 2026; Litmus, 2023). Over half of marketers, 50.7%, believe AI-powered email is more effective than traditional approaches (Statista, 2026).

Where do these email marketing statistics come from?

Every figure on this page traces to a primary release, a research organization's own summary of its data, or trade press naming the primary source, including the Radicati Group, Statista, Litmus, Klaviyo, MailerLite, Omnisend, and Content Marketing Institute. No email marketing statistics here are taken from a listicle citing another listicle.

How much does personalization improve email performance?

Personalized subject lines lift open rates by 10-14% across industries, and personalized emails overall deliver 6x higher transaction rates than generic sends (Omnisend, 2026; Campaign Monitor, cited 2026). Segmented campaigns go further, generating 760% more revenue than non-segmented ones (Campaign Monitor, cited 2026).

What email authentication is required for bulk senders in 2026?

Since February 2024, any sender pushing more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail or Yahoo accounts must authenticate with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, keep spam complaints below 0.3%, and offer one-click unsubscribe on every commercial email (Google and Yahoo bulk sender requirements, 2024).

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