TL;DR
Email marketing has been one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to engage customers and generate sales. Based on the State of Email report from Litmus, for every $1 spent on email marketing, 35% of companies earn $10–$36. This outperforms many other digital channels, including social media ads.
But even the most brilliant email campaigns can flop if your open rates are low. So, how do you make sure your emails get opened and read?
In this article, we’ll go over 11 essential tactics that can help you significantly increase your email open rates and get higher ROI from your email marketing efforts. Beyond basic tips like crafting catchy subject lines and optimizing send times, we’ll cover all the tactics that guarantee your emails get opened more often.
An email marketing open rate (or simply an email open rate) is the percentage of email recipients who opened an email out of the total number of emails successfully delivered. Your open rates can be influenced by factors like subject lines, timing, sender reputation, audience segmentation, and more. To calculate the open rate, you need to divide the number of email opens by the number of delivered emails and multiply that ratio by 100.
Email open rate = (# of email opens / # of emails delivered) * 100%
While email open rate is a helpful metric, it should never be the only one you look at when evaluating the performance of your email marketing campaigns, as it only tells part of the story. To get the whole picture, make sure to track a mix of engagement, conversion, and deliverability metrics.
According to the annual Email Marketing Benchmarks report from GetResponse, which analyzed 4.4 billion messages, the average global email open rate is 39.64%. Your actual open rate can be higher or lower depending on factors like your industry, location, business type, and the type of emails you send. For example, businesses in Europe typically see an average open rate of around 43.25%, while those in North America tend to achieve rates closer to 23.53%.
That being said, what’s the average email open rate for ecommerce? Based on data from Mailchimp, the average email open rate for ecommerce businesses is 29.81%. At the same time, according to Klaviyo's report, the industry’s average open rate for ecommerce is 37.93%.
So what exactly can you do to ensure higher open rates on your email marketing campaigns? These tactics might be helpful:
Your subject line is the gateway to your email content. It’s the first impression your audience gets, and it can determine whether they open your email, ignore it, or – worse – mark it as spam. In fact, statistically, 47% of email recipients decide whether to open an email based on the subject line alone, while 69% may mark it as spam if the subject line seems suspicious or irrelevant.
Considering that most of your subscribers probably get dozens (if not hundreds!) of new emails daily, your ultimate goal is to craft a subject line that can really cut through the noise and convey value. Here are 3 important things to keep in mind when creating subject lines:
Preheader text (also known as a preview text) is just as critical as your subject line when it comes to getting people to open and read your emails. If your subject line is the title, your preheader is the subtitle that adds context. Preheaders typically run between 80 and 100 characters, so make every word count.
Well-crafted preheaders can truly make a difference. According to data from GetResponse, emails that include a preheader achieve an average open rate of 44.67% – more than five percentage points higher than the industry average.
What’s also important to remember here is that if you don’t set a preheader in your email’s settings, most email service providers will display the first line of your message instead. And this may fail to provide any value to your audience.
According to CloudHQ, 48% of emails end up in spam folders. This often happens when your messages contain common spam trigger words or phrases. These are flagged because they’re frequently linked to scams, misleading marketing, or overly promotional language. Here are some of the most common spam trigger words and phrases you should avoid in your messages (in both the subject line and body of the email) to ensure your emails don’t end up in spam folders instead of inboxes:
Segmenting your email list makes your messages more relevant to your audience and can significantly improve open rates. For example, based on data published by Sender, segmented email campaigns drive 30% more opens and 50% more click-throughs than unsegmented ones.
These are some examples of segmentation categories that work best for ecommerce and retail brands:
The sender’s name can significantly impact your email open rates. It’s basically one of the three elements your recipients see in their inbox before they even open a message. Stats say that 42% of people look at the sender’s name when deciding whether to open an email. These two approaches might be helpful when deciding what sender name to use:
Let’s face it, generic, one-size-fits-all emails often feel impersonal and uninspiring. And they rarely drive strong engagement. Personalization, on the other hand, can make a significant difference by delivering a much more relevant experience. When you tailor your email subject lines, in particular, that drives higher open rates. According to Campaign Monitor, personalized subject lines can increase open rates by up to 26%.
Here's a quick example: instead of using a generic subject line like “Dear subscriber, we’ve just added new features”, you might use something like “Hi Peter, we added the features you requested”. Not only will it lift your open rates, but it will also make your email feel more personal and relevant. Plus, it can help you improve other email engagement metrics like click-through rates and conversions.
Optimizing your send times is another important factor to consider if you want to improve your open rates. So, what are the best times and days to send out your email marketing campaigns?
Well, there’s no magic formula that guarantees that sending emails on a particular day and time will improve open rates across every industry or audience because too many variables can affect the outcome.
However, based on the Email Marketing Benchmarks report from GetResponse, there are two time slots that get higher open rates: early in the morning (4-6 AM) and later in the afternoon (5-7 PM). The report also revealed that while the average open and click-through rates are the highest on Tuesdays, they aren’t dramatically different from the rest of the week.
Image source: GetResponse
Optimizing your emails for mobile isn’t optional anymore. Based on stats from Genesys, in 2025, mobile devices accounted for 55%+ of all email opens globally. Moreover, 75% of users will immediately delete emails that aren’t optimized for mobile.
While there are many best practices you can implement to optimize your email for mobile (like using smaller images that download faster, larger fonts, and finger-friendly CTA buttons), it all really starts with a subject line. Aim for 25–50 characters to make sure it’s visible on mobile screens.
Obviously, your emails won’t get opened if they never reach the inbox. We’ve already mentioned the importance of avoiding common words that trigger spam filters in your emails. But there’s so much more to it.
Since Gmail and Yahoo introduced stricter authentication rules in 2024, and spam filters have become more advanced, it’s essential to follow these best practices to keep your messages deliverable and protect your sender reputation:
A/B testing is one of the most efficient ways to improve the overall efficiency of your email marketing campaign – and open rates, in particular. If you always send the same version of each email, you’ll simply never know what works best. You can test many different aspects of your email content, but for the sake of improving open rates, focus on testing subject lines, preview text, sender names, and send times.
One key thing to remember is that you’ll get the most valuable insights from A/B testing when you change only one factor at a time. If you tweak too many variables at once, you won’t know which one really influenced the results.
Even with the most engaging subject lines, fine-tuned preview texts, and optimized send times, your emails won’t always trigger most of your contacts to open. And that’s completely normal – people get busy with work, life, or other priorities and skip messages without meaning to. That’s exactly why sending a follow-up makes sense.
Resending the email to unengaged subscribers, typically with a different subject line or a refined send time, can boost your total opens significantly. Research from MailerLite has actually shown that resending an email campaign can increase open rates by an extra 30%. At the same time, if subscribers don’t engage after multiple tries, consider taking them off your list to maintain a healthy sender reputation.
Boosting your email open rates in 2026 and beyond requires more than simply following the best practices we’ve listed above. You also need the right technology to back your strategy. And that’s where Maropost Marketing Cloud can make a difference, helping you ensure you get the most out of your email marketing campaigns. With Marketing Cloud, you can:
Book a demo now to discover how Maropost Marketing Cloud can help you run more effective email campaigns and reach your customers and prospects at the right moments in their journey.
A good email open rate typically falls between 35% and 40%. But it can vary widely depending on the industry, your audience, and the type of email campaigns you are running. For example, niche B2B sectors may see higher engagement, while ecommerce or entertainment brands might average slightly lower. The key is to benchmark against your own past performance and continuously optimize for improvement instead of chasing a universal number.
Beyond the open rate, the most critical email marketing metrics that you should track include:
To boost your open rates, write subject lines that immediately grab attention – think urgency, curiosity, or clear value. Personalization also goes a long way in making your emails feel more relevant. But instead of just using someone’s first name, try referencing their past behavior or interests (for example, “Still thinking about those running shoes?” instead of a generic “Check out our sale”). Additionally, make sure to avoid spam trigger words that can hurt deliverability. And finally, A/B test different variations to continually optimize what resonates best with your audience.