# How to increase your email open rate (20,000 campaigns studied)

Duncan Elder

·26 min read·[Email marketing](https://www.mailerlite.com/blog/category/email-marketing)·Apr 15, 2026

There’s lots of advice out there about how to increase email open rates. But what actually makes an impact?

For this article, we dug deep into our data to discover the key points that lead to more opens.

Here are 3 highlights of what we found:

- Top-performing subject lines were 45% more likely to be between 20 and 40 characters than bottom-performing ones.
- The most opened campaigns were 27.52% more likely to use subscriber filters than bottom-performing ones.
- Top-performing campaigns were 22.58% more likely to include a custom preheader than the bottom-performing ones.

But that’s not all! The data included plenty more insights and tips to help you get more eyes on your emails. Read on to discover what works!

## First up, what’s a good email open rate?

Our latest email marketing benchmarks report found that the median open rate in 2025 was 43.46%, a slight increase from 2024's figure of 42.35%. This is a [good open rate](https://www.mailerlite.com/blog/what-is-good-open-rate-and-ctr-for-email) to aim for.

Open rates vary significantly by industry; travel and transportation had the lowest open rate at 30.10%, while religion had the highest at 55.71%. See open rates for select industries in the table below, or view the [email benchmarks report](https://www.mailerlite.com/blog/compare-your-email-performance-metrics-industry-benchmarks) for all the data.

| Industry                | Open rate | Click rate | Unsubscribe rate |
|-------------------------|-----------|------------|------------------|
| Author                  | 43.14%    | 2.75%      | 0.31%            |
| Nonprofit               | 52.38%    | 2.90%      | 0.19%            |
| E-commerce              | 32.67%    | 1.07%      | 0.18%            |
| Artist                  | 49.23%    | 2.52%      | 0.27%            |
| Online courses          | 43.10%    | 1.39%      | 0.23%            |
| Music and musicians     | 45.93%    | 1.70%      | 0.23%            |
| Business and finance    | 43.34%    | 2.37%      | 0.16%            |
| Media                   | 42.97%    | 4.10%      | 0.10%            |
| Higher education        | 43.98%    | 2.15%      | 0.10%            |
| Coaching                | 48.07%    | 1.42%      | 0.30%            |

Bear in mind that these are just benchmarks. If your open rate is much higher or lower than this number, use your own metrics as a starting point and try to increase your open rate from there.

## About the data we used for this article

We compared the characteristics of the 10,000 top-performing campaigns with those of the bottom 10,000 campaigns. Performance was based on open rate, and we only selected campaigns sent to over 1,000 subscribers.

We then looked for patterns that could highlight what makes a difference when it comes to getting people to open your emails.

We’ve complemented this new data with insights from our existing articles and testing to show a complete overview of the factors that can impact open rate.

## 13 ways to increase email open rates

These are the 13 points that we found to impact open rates. They can be put into 2 categories: visible and non-visible factors.

Visible factors are those like your subject line and preheader, which can directly cause people to open your emails. Non-visible factors include things like who you're sending to, the deliverability of your email marketing provider, and how you segment your list or time your campaigns.

Our list contains a mix of each type of factor. Here they are!

### 1. Use a subject line between 20 and 40 characters

The most opened campaigns were 45% more likely to have a subject line between 20 and 40 characters than those in the bottom-performing data set.

### 2. Segment, group or filter subscribers

Top-performing email marketing campaigns were 28% more likely to use subscriber filters, such as sending to specific groups or segments, than the bottom-performing campaigns.

### 3. Fill out your custom preheaders

An [email preheader](https://www.mailerlite.com/blog/increase-your-email-open-rate-with-preheaders) is the text that you see next to the subject line on desktop inboxes or under the subject line on mobile inboxes.

### 4. Use an emoji in your subject line (when appropriate)

People love emojis, so it makes sense that using them in subject lines would increase open rates.

### 5. Use a personal sender name

Using a real sender name may cause an increase in opens by making your email seem friendly.

### 6. Use AI to write higher-performing subject lines

Mailerlite's AI subject line generator suggests ones based on your campaign content.

### 7. Send your emails at the right time

The highest engagement fell between 8 AM and 11 AM local time, except on Friday when most opens came at 6 PM.

### 8. Consider using automation

Automated emails vastly outperformed campaigns when it came to open rates.

### 9. Experiment with your email cadence

Open rate decreases gradually as sending frequency increases.

### 10. Remove your inactive subscribers

The easiest way to increase your open rate is to remove people who don’t open your emails.

### 11. Be mindful of how many links you include

Emails with 2 to 5 links had the highest open rate in our dataset at 34.17%.

### 12. Use resend to unopened

This feature won’t increase the open rate of the initial campaign, but will give people who didn’t open the first email another chance to see your content.

### 13. Send content people want to open

Keep track of [email marketing metrics](https://www.mailerlite.com/blog/email-marketing-metrics) and track how different topics perform on other channels.

## You’ve increased your open rate! What next?

Increasing open rates is an important first step in your email marketing strategy. But once someone opens your message, it’s important that it then continues to push them towards your goals.