Email Open Rate Calculator

Find out what percentage of your subscribers opened your emails and boost your campaign performance. This calculator helps you measure the effectiveness of your subject lines and overall subscriber engagement.

Your Email Open Rate is:

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How Open Rate is Calculated

Your email open rate is the percentage of successfully delivered emails that were opened by subscribers. It's a key indicator of how well your subject lines are performing and how engaged your audience is.

Formula: (Total Emails Opened / Total Emails Sent) × 100


Example: If you sent 5,000 emails and 1,250 were opened:

(1,250 / 5,000) × 100 = 25% Open Rate

Why Your Open Rate is a Crucial Metric

  • Measures Subject Line Effectiveness: The open rate is the most direct measure of how compelling your subject line and preheader text are.
  • Indicates Subscriber Engagement: A consistently high open rate signals a healthy, engaged email list that values your content.
  • Impacts Sender Reputation: Email providers like Gmail use open rates as a signal to determine whether your emails should land in the primary inbox or the spam folder.
  • Helps Optimize Send Times: By tracking open rates, you can test and identify the best days and times to send emails to your specific audience.

5 Tips to Improve Your Email Open Rate

  1. Craft Compelling Subject Lines: Create curiosity, use personalization, and keep your subject lines concise and mobile-friendly.
  2. Segment Your Email Lists: Send targeted content to smaller segments of your audience. A more relevant email is far more likely to be opened.
  3. Maintain Good List Hygiene: Regularly remove inactive subscribers who haven't opened your emails in several months to keep your list healthy.
  4. Optimize Your Send Times: Use your email marketing platform's analytics to discover when your audience is most likely to open your emails.
  5. Use a Recognizable Sender Name: Your "From" name should be instantly recognizable and trustworthy to your subscribers.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good email open rate?

A good email open rate varies by industry, but a general benchmark is around 20%. Niches with highly engaged audiences (like hobbies or religion) can see rates of 25% or higher, while more saturated industries (like marketing or retail) may see rates closer to 15-18%. Anything above 30% is generally considered excellent.

How is open rate tracked?

Email open rates are typically tracked using a tiny, invisible 1x1 pixel image embedded in the email. When a recipient's email client loads the images in the email, it sends a request to the server to load this pixel, which is then counted as an 'open.' Note that this method is not 100% accurate, as some users block images by default.

Why is my open rate low?

A low open rate is most often caused by a weak or unengaging subject line. Other common causes include poor sender reputation (causing your emails to land in spam), a disengaged or old email list, or sending emails at a time when your audience is not active.

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