What is a good email open rate for a small business?
Short answer: 35-50% on transactional/operational; 22-35% on newsletter; under 18% means deliverability or list health needs work.
Full answer
Open rate depends on what you're sending:
Transactional / operational (appointment confirmations, recall, follow-up): 35-50%. Below 30% suggests deliverability or list hygiene issues.
Newsletter / weekly update: 22-35%. Below 18% means list health is degrading.
Cold outreach (one-to-many): 8-15%. Below 5% means subject line + sender domain need attention.
Open rate has lost some signal value since Apple Mail Privacy Protection started auto-loading images, but it remains a useful directional metric — especially when you compare cohorts over time.