"Is a 25% open rate good?"

I get this question constantly. The frustrating answer is: it depends. But that's not helpful when you're trying to figure out if your emails are actually working.

The problem is that most benchmark reports are useless for SaaS companies. They lump together e-commerce newsletters, B2C promotional blasts, and transactional receipts into one giant average. That number tells you nothing about whether your onboarding sequence is performing well or if your trial expiration emails need work.

So let's talk real numbers. SaaS-specific numbers. The kind that actually help you understand if your emails are doing their job.

Why Generic Benchmarks Don't Work

Every few months, some marketing platform publishes an "Email Marketing Benchmarks" report claiming the average open rate is somewhere between 15-25%. These reports get shared everywhere, and suddenly everyone is measuring themselves against a number that has nothing to do with their actual situation.

Here's the problem: that "average" includes retail brands sending weekly promotional emails to lists of millions, small businesses blasting their entire database with monthly newsletters, and enterprise companies sending internal communications. None of that is relevant if you're a SaaS company trying to convert trial users into paying customers.

SaaS email is fundamentally different. Your emails are going to people who actively signed up for your product. They have context about who you are. They're expecting to hear from you. Comparing your onboarding sequence to a retail brand's promotional blast is like comparing apples to submarines.

The benchmarks that matter are the ones specific to your type of email and your type of business.

Transactional Email Benchmarks

Let's start with transactional emails because they're the easiest to benchmark. These are your password resets, email verifications, and receipts. Users are actively waiting for them.

For transactional emails, you should be seeing open rates above 60%. Good performers hit 75%, and if you're doing everything right, you can get above 85%. Click rates should be at least 15%, with great performers hitting 25-35%.

If your transactional open rates are below 50%, something is wrong. Either your emails are landing in spam, your subject lines are confusing, or your sender name looks untrustworthy. These are emails people are waiting for, so low engagement means a technical or trust problem, not a content problem.

The good news is that transactional emails are relatively easy to fix. Check your authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), make sure your sender name is recognizable, and write subject lines that clearly state what's inside. "Reset your password" beats "Action required" every time.

Welcome and Onboarding Benchmarks

Welcome emails are your first impression. A user just signed up, they're engaged, they're interested. This is the moment of maximum attention.

Welcome emails should see open rates above 50%. If you're hitting 60-70%, you're doing well. Click rates should be north of 20%, with top performers hitting 30-40%. These numbers might seem high compared to generic benchmarks, but remember: these users literally just gave you their email address. They want to hear from you.

The challenge with welcome emails is that many SaaS companies waste this moment of maximum attention. They send a generic "Welcome to ProductName!" email that says nothing useful. The best welcome emails do one of two things: either they help the user take their next step immediately, or they set expectations for what's coming.

For the rest of your onboarding sequence (the emails that follow over the next week or two), expect a gradual decline. Your second email might see 40-50% opens. By email five or six, you might be down to 30-35%. This is normal. Not everyone needs every email, and some users will have already activated or decided to leave.

The metric that matters more than open rates for onboarding is completion rate. What percentage of users who receive your first onboarding email make it through to your activation milestone? If that number is above 40%, you're doing okay. Above 55% is great. Above 70% means your onboarding is genuinely helping users succeed.

Trial Email Benchmarks

Trial emails are where the money is. These are the emails that convince someone to pull out their credit card. They deserve their own category.

For trial expiration sequences (the 3-5 emails you send as the trial winds down), expect open rates between 40-60%. Click rates should be 10-20%. But the number you really care about is trial-to-paid conversion rate.

Here's the thing: open rates on trial emails can be misleading. Someone might open every single email and still not convert because they were never a good fit for your product. Conversely, someone might ignore most of your emails but convert on the last day because they finally had time to make a decision.

A good trial-to-paid conversion rate depends heavily on your pricing and product complexity. For self-serve SaaS under $50/month, 5-10% is typical, with great products hitting 15-20%. For higher-priced products with sales involvement, you might see 20-40%, but those conversions are as much about the sales process as the emails.

The most useful thing you can do is segment your trial conversion rate by email engagement. If users who engage with your trial emails convert at 15% while users who don't engage convert at 3%, your emails are clearly working. That 5x difference is more meaningful than any benchmark comparison.

Product and Feature Email Benchmarks

Once someone is a customer, your email relationship changes. You're no longer trying to convince them to buy. You're trying to help them get more value and stick around.

Product update emails (new features, improvements, announcements) typically see lower engagement than onboarding or trial emails. Open rates of 25-35% are normal. Click rates of 5-10% are typical. This isn't because your emails are bad. It's because not every update is relevant to every user.

The way to improve these numbers is segmentation. If you're announcing a feature for power users, don't send it to everyone. If you're improving your mobile app, only email people who use mobile. Targeted product emails can hit 45-55% open rates because they're actually relevant to the recipients.

Re-engagement emails (reaching out to inactive users) will always have the lowest numbers. You're emailing people who've already disengaged. Open rates of 15-25% are reasonable. Click rates of 3-8% are typical. Reactivation rates (getting someone to actually come back and use the product) of 2-10% are what you should expect.

A 5% reactivation rate might sound low, but think about what it means: you're recovering revenue from users who would otherwise be gone. Even modest reactivation rates add up over time.

What Actually Affects Your Numbers

Before you start optimizing, it's worth understanding what drives these metrics. Some factors are within your control, and some aren't.

Your audience matters more than most people realize. B2B SaaS targeting developers tends to see lower open rates because developers are suspicious of marketing emails (and often use aggressive spam filtering). B2B SaaS targeting marketers or salespeople sees higher engagement because those people actually like reading emails. B2C SaaS varies wildly depending on the niche.

Your price point also affects engagement. When someone is evaluating a $500/month tool, they pay more attention to every email because the decision matters. When they're trying a $9/month tool, the stakes are lower, and they're less likely to engage deeply with your communications.

Product complexity plays a role too. If your product is complex and users genuinely need guidance, they'll engage more with onboarding emails. If your product is simple and intuitive, users might ignore your helpful emails because they've already figured things out on their own. Lower engagement in that case isn't necessarily bad.

The Metrics That Actually Drive Business Results

Here's a secret that took me too long to learn: open rates and click rates are mostly vanity metrics. They're easy to measure and feel good to improve, but they don't necessarily translate to business results.

The metrics that actually matter connect email engagement to outcomes you care about.

For onboarding, track activation rate by email engagement. What percentage of users who engage with your onboarding emails reach your activation milestone, compared to users who don't? If engaged users activate at 60% and non-engaged users activate at 25%, your emails are clearly valuable.

For trials, track conversion rate by email engagement. Same idea. How much more likely are email-engaged users to convert? This tells you whether your trial emails are actually influencing the purchase decision.

For retention, track churn rate by email engagement. Do users who engage with your product emails churn less than users who ignore them? If email-engaged customers churn at 2% monthly while non-engaged customers churn at 6%, you have clear evidence that your emails help retention.

These comparisons give you something that open rate benchmarks never can: proof that your emails are actually moving the needle on business outcomes.

Improving Your Numbers

If your metrics are below where you want them, here are the highest-impact changes you can make.

Start with your sender name and subject lines. Most people decide whether to open an email based on who it's from and what the subject says. A recognizable sender name (either your company name or a person's name from your company) beats a generic "noreply@" address every time. Subject lines should be specific about what's inside rather than clever or mysterious.

Look at your send timing. For B2B SaaS, Tuesday through Thursday mornings tend to work best. But more importantly, consider behavioral timing. An email sent right after a user takes an action will always outperform an email sent on an arbitrary schedule.

Segment your lists ruthlessly. Sending the same email to your entire user base is almost always a mistake. Users at different stages need different messages. Users with different use cases care about different features. The more targeted your emails, the higher your engagement.

Finally, make your emails worth opening. This sounds obvious, but most SaaS emails are boring. They announce features nobody asked about, share tips nobody needs, or push upgrades nobody wants. Every email should pass a simple test: would I be happy to receive this?

Stop Chasing Generic Benchmarks

The numbers in industry reports are averages of averages, smoothed across millions of emails that have nothing to do with your situation. Comparing yourself to those benchmarks is a recipe for either false confidence or unnecessary anxiety.

Use the SaaS-specific numbers in this post as a rough guide, but focus primarily on improving your own metrics over time. If your onboarding sequence went from 35% to 42% open rates, that's progress regardless of what some report says you "should" be at.

And always connect your email metrics to business outcomes. Open rates that don't translate to activation, conversion, or retention are just numbers on a dashboard. The goal isn't to hit benchmark numbers. The goal is to build emails that help your business grow.