Welcome to the ultimate guide to email marketing industry statistics and benchmarks.
I'm compiling just about every email-related statistic I can find on this page, with all sources listed at the bottom of the page. Use the table of contents to jump between topics.
How Many People Use Email?
In 2022, there were 4.26 billion email users, and that number is expected to hit to 4.73 billion users in 2026.
And How Many Emails Are Sent Per Day and Year?
333.2 Billion emails were sent and received per day in 2022. So the average email user receives 78 emails a day.
And over a year, that’s over 126 trillion emails!
And this number is forecast to grow to 392.5 billion emails per day in 2026.
The Return on Investment of Email Marketing
Multiple sources indicate that email marketing’s return on investment (ROI) is very high.
Omnisend data indicates that email has a 40X ROI. So for every $1 you spend, you earn back $40.
According to Litmus, the average ROI for email marketing is $36 for every $1 spent.
And size tends to matter. Lists with 500,000+ contacts have an ROI of 42:1, while those under have an ROI of 33.1.
Email frequency is also an issue.
As I’ve said 10 million times, sending more emails makes you more money.
Sending once per month gives a Return On Investment of 13:1.
That number skyrockets to 46:1 when you send 9-16 times per month.
On the other hand, Litmus also tells us that companies do not do a great job of measuring the ROI of email marketing. Just 12.5% of companies said they are monitoring email ROI well or very well.
That makes sense, because email marketing is interwoven with so many other things like SEO, webinars, social media, etc. It’s not easy to figure out exactly what’s driving the return.
HubSpot data shows that 95% of marketers feel that email marketing was effective in meeting business goals.
And Litmus reports that 79% of marketers rate email as one of their top 3 most effective marketing channels.
Average Open Rates, Click Rates, and Click to Open Rates for Email Marketing
CampaignMonitor statistics show that the average email open rate is 21.5%. This number has risen in recent years thanks to Apple Mail Privacy Protection, which causes email opens to be overstated.
And the average click-through rate is 2.3%.
The average click-to-open rate is 10.5%
If you don’t know what these mean, check out our email marketing terms guide.
Interestingly, device type has a major impact on click rates.
Email Marketing Statistics and Benchmarks By Industries
Email open and click rates numbers vary widely by industry, with retail at the low end and education at the high end, according to CampaignMonitor.
Industry | Open Rates | Click-Through Rates | Click-to-Open Rates | Unsubscribe Rates |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Advertising & Marketing | 20.5% | 1.8% | 9.0% | 0.2% |
Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing, Hunting | 27.3% | 3.4% | 12.5% | 0.3% |
Consumer Packaged Goods | 20.0% | 1.9% | 11.1% | 0.1% |
Education | 28.5% | 4.4% | 15.7% | 0.2% |
Financial Services | 27.1% | 2.4% | 10.1% | 0.2% |
Restaurant, Food & Beverage | 18.5% | 2.0% | 10.5% | 0.1% |
Government & Politics | 19.4% | 2.8% | 14.3% | 0.1% |
Healthcare Services | 23.7% | 3.0% | 13.4% | 0.3% |
IT/Tech/Software | 22.7% | 2.0% | 9.8% | 0.2% |
Logistics & Wholesale | 23.4% | 3.0% | 13.4% | 0.3% |
Media, Entertainment, Publishing | 23.9% | 2.9% | 12.4% | 0.1% |
Nonprofit | 26.6% | 2.7% | 10.2% | 0.2% |
Other | 19.9% | 2.6% | 13.2% | 0.3% |
Professional Services | 19.3% | 2.1% | 11.1% | 0.2% |
Real Estate, Design, Construction | 21.7% | 3.6% | 17.2% | 0.2% |
Retail | 17.1% | 0.7% | 5.8% | 0.1% |
Travel, Hospitality, Leisure | 20.2% | 1.4% | 8.7% | 0.2% |
Wellness & Fitness | 19.2% | 1.2% | 6.0% | 0.4% |
Average Totals | 21.5% | 2.3% | 10.5% | -.1% |
Email User Demographics
The vast majority of people use email, though those 65 and up use email at a lower rate:
- Ages 15-24: 93.41% use email
- Ages 25-44: 95.19% use email
- Ages 45-64: 91.11%
- Ages 65+: 85.53%
Spam Email Statistics
Spamming is the bulk sending of unwanted emails. If you’ve received emails from a person or company without giving them permission, then you’ve been spammed.
Spam makes up a large percentage of total email.
So how much spam is sent?
From October 2020 to September 2021, 161.8 million spam emails were sent per day. That's 84% of all emails sent, which is a shocking number.
The red bars in this chart are spam:
The biggest spam senders by country are:
- The United States: 8.61 billion spam emails
- China: 8.53 billion spam emails
- Russia: 8.09 billion spam emails
The positive side of this is that it’s amazing how much spam is blocked! Gmail says it blocks 99.9% of spam, malware, and dangerous links.
And on the negative side, so much spam email is sent every day that it actually has a carbon footprint! It takes a lot of energy to run the server farms that keep emails pumping 24/7/365.
The Most Popular Email Clients
You may have thought Gmail was the most used email client worldwide (I did), so you might be surprised it’s actually Apple:
- Apple: 58.67%
- Gmail: 27.96%
- Outlook: 4.39%
- Yahoo! Mail: 2.85%
- Google Android: 1.48%
- Outlook.com: 0.65%
- Samsung Mail: 0.16%
- Thunderbird: 0.15%
- Orange.fr: 0.07%
- Web.de: 0.06%
This reflects the huge popularity of Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices.
Just be aware that many people are using Apple Mail to read email sent to services like Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo!
So Apple does not have 58.67% market share of email accounts.
There are over 1.8 billion Gmail accounts, and Gmail users send over 121 million emails every day.
Microsoft’s Outlook has 400 million users, while Yahoo! mail has 225 million accounts.
The Most Popular Email Platforms
NOTE: This list of email sending providers is the most problematic data set in this guide because I had to manually collect it from different sources like press releases, company websites, SEC documents. Each number is also from a different time, as I explain below.
Here is each email platform and the timing of each data point:
MailChimp has 14 million customers as of 2020.
MailerLite has 1.4 million customers as of April 2022.
ConvertKit has 603,000+ customers (unknown to date).
ConstantContact has 600,000+ customers (unknown date).
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) has 500,000+ customers (unknown date).
GetResponse has 350,000+ customers (unknown date).
ActiveCampaign has 185,000+ customers (unkown date).
HubSpot has 184,000+ customers as of June 2023.
Klaviyo has 130,000+ customers as of June 2023.
Keap/Infusionsoft has125,000+ customers as of 2020.
beehiiv has 15,000 customers as of August 2023 .
Note that each company may count customers/accounts in a different way. For example, some may include only paying customers while others may include those on free accounts.
But either way, I'm shocked at how big MailChimp is. I knew they were big, but 14 million as of 2020 is pretty nuts. I wouldn't be surprised if they were over 18 million by now.
Email Phishing Statistics
Phishing is an impersonation technique meant to trick you into divulging private information.
Phishing is growing fast. According to Proofpoint, in 2020, there were 241,234 Phishing attacks, a 110% increase from 2019.
96% of these attacks come through email, and they cost companies $14.8 million on average, up more than triple from 2015.
This is how Phishing works:
A criminal will send you an email disguised to look like a message from a legitimate company to get you to enter valuable information like your username and password, or credit card information.
The most targeted industries for phishing are:
Online stores (ecommerce)
- Social media companies
- Banks and other financial institutions
- Payment systems like merchant card processors
- IT companies
- Telecommunication companies
- Delivery companies
These brands are the most widely impersonated in phishing schemes:
- Microsoft
- Amazon
- Chase
- Wells Fargo
- Bank of America
- Apple
- FedEx
- DHL
Email Marketing Statistics and Industry Benchmarks Data Sources
Statista (number of email users)
Statista (email volume)
Litmus (return on investment of email)
HubSpot (effectiveness of email marketing)
CampaignMonitor (average email engagement rates)
Statista (email demographics)
Statista (spam data numbers)
ProfileBooks (ecological impact of spam)
Oberlo (most popular email clients
Proofpoint (phishing statistics)
Thank you for reading this guide to email marketing statistics and industry benchmarks.
If you have any numbers you think should be added, let me know!
