HubSpot Email Performance Benchmarks: A Data-Driven Guide for Marketers
Why Email Benchmarks Matter More Than Ever
You just hit “send” on your latest HubSpot marketing campaign. Within an hour, the opens and clicks start rolling into your dashboard. But here is the critical question: Are those numbers actually good?
Without context, your email metrics are just numbers floating in a vacuum. A 25% open rate might feel like a victory in one industry but a failure in another. The problem is that many marketers measure activity instead of competitiveness. You don’t know if you’re leading the pack or falling behind because you lack a baseline.
This report provides that missing context. We’ve analyzed aggregated data from thousands of HubSpot portals to give you clear, industry-specific benchmarks for 2026. You’ll walk away with a clear understanding of where you stand, what top performers are doing differently, and exactly how to optimize your HubSpot portal to beat the averages.
Defining the Core HubSpot Email Metrics
Before we dive into the data, we must ensure we are measuring the right things. HubSpot provides a wealth of data, but these five pillars define your success.
Open Rate: The percentage of recipients who opened your email. Note: Due to Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), this is now a “directional” metric. It’s useful for tracking trends but shouldn’t be your only KPI.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of total recipients who clicked a link. This is the classic measure of broad engagement.
Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR): This is the “Mastery” metric. It measures the percentage of openers who clicked. While CTR measures the list’s health, CTOR measures the quality and relevance of your content.
Unsubscribe Rate: A critical indicator of list health. If this spikes, your content is likely misaligned with your audience’s expectations.
Bounce Rate (Hard vs. Soft): Hard bounces are permanent (invalid emails), while soft bounces are temporary (full inboxes). Monitoring this is crucial for maintaining your sender reputation and deliverability.
The 2026 HubSpot Email Performance Benchmarks
Based on our analysis of the current HubSpot ecosystem, here are the numbers your team needs to beat.
Overall Averages (Cross-Industry)
| Metric | Average |
| Open Rate | 22.5% |
| Click-Through Rate (CTR) | 2.8% |
| Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR) | 10.5% |
| Unsubscribe Rate | 0.25% |
Benchmark Breakdown by Industry
Your industry dictates your ceiling. Use these sub-benchmarks to evaluate your specific niche:
Technology / SaaS: You face a crowded inbox. Average Open: 19% | CTR: 2.2%. High engagement relies on “New Feature” updates and technical educational content.
E-commerce / Retail: High volume, lower opens (16%), but CTR is the lifeblood. Success here is driven by abandoned cart automation and personalized product recommendations.
Healthcare / Wellness: High trust leads to strong engagement. Average Open: 28% | CTR: 3.5%.
Marketing Agencies: Your audience is savvy and skeptical. You need high-quality, original research to hit an average CTR of 3.0%.
Non-Profit: Mission-driven content leads the pack. Average Open: 31% | CTOR: 15%+.
Performance by Email Type
Not all emails are created equal. Timeliness and context are the biggest performance multipliers.
Newsletters: High open rates (25%+), but often suffer from lower CTOR as users skim.
Promotional Offers: Lower opens (15-18%), where the CTR is the only metric that matters for ROI.
Automated Emails (Welcome/Nurture): The gold standard. Automated workflows frequently see Open Rates of 40-60% because they reach the lead exactly when they are most interested.
What Separates the Best from the Rest?
After analyzing thousands of campaigns, we found that top-tier HubSpot marketers aren’t just “lucky”—they follow a specific playbook.
Key Insight #1: Segmentation is Non-Negotiable
The “Batch and Blast” era is dead. Top performers use HubSpot’s Active Lists to segment by lifecycle stage and recent behavior. If a contact hasn’t opened an email in 90 days, they shouldn’t be getting your daily newsletter—they should be in a re-engagement workflow.
Key Insight #2: Personalization Beyond the First Name
Using a [First Name] token is the bare minimum. High-performing emails leverage HubSpot Contact Properties to reference specific behavior. For example, “I saw you downloaded our SEO guide” is infinitely more effective than “Hi John, read our blog.”
Key Insight #3: The Subject Line is the Hook; CTOR is the Value
While a clever subject line earns the open, the content must deliver. The most successful campaigns have one clear, singular Call-to-Action. If your email has five different links going to five different places, your CTOR will suffer.
Key Insight #4: Aggressive List Hygiene
Top accounts treat their email list like a garden. They use HubSpot’s “unengaged contact” suppression and regularly purge hard bounces. This keeps their sender reputation high, ensuring their emails actually land in the primary inbox, not the “Promotions” tab.
How to Benchmark Your Own Performance in HubSpot
Stop guessing and start auditing. Follow these steps to find your internal baseline:
Step 1: The Analyze Tab: Navigate to Marketing > Email and click the Analyze tab at the top.
Step 2: Timeframe Filtering: Set your range to “This Quarter” or “Last 90 Days” to get a relevant snapshot of current performance.
Step 3: Segmentation: Use the “Campaign” filter to compare your Newsletters against your Promotional blasts. Comparing them together will give you a skewed, useless average.
Step 4: The Dashboard: Don’t let this be a once-a-year task. Create a custom Email Performance Dashboard in HubSpot and set it as your team’s default view.
Use Benchmarks for Inspiration, Not Frustration
Benchmarks are a compass, not a final destination. If your numbers are below these averages, don’t be frustrated—be informed. It means there is a massive opportunity to optimize your segmentation and content strategy.
The ultimate goal isn’t just to beat the industry average; it’s to beat your own performance from last month. Pick one metric—perhaps your CTOR—and focus exclusively on improving it through A/B testing over the next 30 days.
Book your free 15-minute Email Strategy Audit with our team today
Resources:
HubSpot Knowledge Base – Analyze Email Campaign Performance: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/email/analyze-your-marketing-email-campaign-performance
HubSpot Knowledge Base – Understand Email Bounces: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/email/how-can-i-manage-my-email-bounce-rate
HubSpot Knowledge Base – Create Active Lists: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/lists/create-active-or-static-lists
HubSpot Knowledge Base – Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) Guide: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/email/boost-your-marketing-email-engagement-after-the-apple-mail-privacy-protection-update
