40% weekly newsletter open rate achieved, 1100 subscribers, new startup: what's a good benchmark?

Question

I started building product and community around my startup May 2020, did a soft launch mid Sept 2020. Through out the process I've taken my weekly newsletter very seriously. I average a 35% open rate, 4% click rate, 10% click-to-open rate.

I'm curious about benchmark open rates for early-stage startups, growing email subscriber communities.

Happy to share my strategy for newsletters as well. I researched the best newsletters in circulation, best practices, and developed a content structure and style that people read, and gets sales and referrals. Email me if you want to check it out: malinda@lessonsup.com

Natalie Furness · Accepted Answer

40% is a good rate, you can only increase your open rate by know your customers better.

For example I was able to achieve 78% open rate on a cold email last week to a very niche segmented audience because I knew the title that this particular persona wouldn't be able to resist not opening. It was for Dietitians and my title was " Enquiry about your Dietetics expertise.

These day's my newsletters get 50-70% open rate + but this is through automated email resending if readers did not open a mail within 4 days, I trigger a workflow to resend the unopened email with a different title. Also, anyone who does not engage in an email within 10 weeks is removed from our list. No point wasting IP whitelist points on people who are unengaged ;)

Sune B. Thorsen · Answer

Is your product for business or consumers? :)

I think 40% is good regardless. Would be interesting to hear more about what you're building.

Max Kamyshev · Answer

This is good rate!

Angela Goodhart · Answer

@natalie_furn I like that idea of automatically resending to the non-openers with a different title!  I will try that. Thank you.

40% weekly newsletter open rate achieved, 1100 subscribers, new startup: what's a good benchmark?

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