We get a lot of questions about "benchmarks" here.
"How well should my cart abandonment program convert?"
"What's the perfect timing for a win-back email?"
"Are my open rates good?"
"What are the industry benchmarks? How do I compare?"
I feel borderline irresponsible, answering these questions with anything other than, "I don't know." That may sound strange coming from someone who has worked in email for the last eight years.
Here's my problem with benchmarks.
99.99% of them are so situational that they could never provide an accurate frame of reference for comparison. It's apples to oranges. There are so many variables that make generic benchmarks useless. Competitive pressure, discounting strategy, urgency, intent, traffic source, seasonality, customer mindset, and the list goes on. These nuances make it impossible to compare your performance to that of another brand.
Here's the next part of my answer.
Unless you can find benchmark data on a brand that is doing what you're doing, in your industry, serving the same customers, in the same context, stop trying to compare yourself to others.
Instead, execute on your ideas, establish your own internal benchmarks, then beat those.
It would be best if you purged subscribers from your list who've been inactive for longer than 6-months. Oracle recently confirmed that Gmail is penalizing senders more heavily than ever for longer-term inactives. We put together a short post on how to set up automated sunsetting policies to keep your list healthy.
Most marketers avoid double opt-in. Why? Because it reduces the number of new subscribers who activate every month. Our bet is that within 24 months, double opt-in is a federal requirement in the U.S. This guide outlines how to set up double opt-in effectively.
If you search for 'email marketing software' on Google, you'll most likely see this post by the folks at Venture Harbour as the top organic search result. They research the top 100 email vendors every year then publish the results. They ranked Rejoiner #5 for 2020. Hubspot (NASDAQ: HUBS), market cap $8B, is #3. I'll take it.
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