• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, June 7, 2023

North America is behind Oceana when it comes to email open rates. But it is by far the leader in the world in click-through rates and other key metrics, judging by 2023 Email Marketing Benchmarks, a study by GetResponse.  

The average North American open rate is 31.02%, compared to 37.93% for Oceana. But North America is above the world average of 26.8% and beats Europe and Asia.  

Moreover, North America has an average click-through rate of 2.96% and a click-to-open rate of 9.56%.  

In contrast, Europe has a click rate of 2.34% and click-to-open rate of 7.61%. The worldwide average click-through rate is 1.89% and the click-to-open rate 7.01%. 

As an individual country, the U.S. has an open rate of 30.74%, a click-through rate of 2.68% and click-to-open rate of 8.72%.

However, the U.S. is outpaced by several countries in click-to-open rates, including Canada (20.12%), Germany (12.11%), (Ukraine (9.56%), India (9.82%) and Israel (9.02%). 

 The U.S. also has one of the world’s worst bounce rates: 5.18%, second only to Peru (5.32%). In contrast, Great Britain has a 2.32% bounce rate, followed by France at 2.01% and Germany at 1.77%. But the U.S. has a paltry 0.08% unsubscribe rate. 

The average global unsubscribe rate is 0.01% and the average bounce rate is 2.57%.  

The three top-performing countries in open rates are the Netherlands, France and Australia, each of which offers a high level of privacy protection, writes Michal Leszczynski, head of content marketing & partnerships at GetResponse.

Similarly, the countries with some of the highest click-through rates are the regulated nations of Canada, Germany and Belgium, Leszczynski notes.

Among industries, Communications, Publishing and Financial Services have higher-than-average click-through rates, whereas Health & Beauty, Healthcare and Internet Marketing have the lowest.  Travel has the highest bounce rate: 6.83%. 

GetResponse analyzed almost 7 billion messages out of nearly 30 billion emails sent by its customers throughout 2022. It looked only at active senders with at least 500 contacts.