Twenty percent would be the conservative estimate. I have two tracking codes and one put the open rate at 20.7% and the other closer to 25%. It does depend on many factors, but many celebrate a 1% open rate and many open rates are far less than that.

If you have the luxury of a list that has a quarter million, you might not care as much. But then who wouldn't want to improve this list as well. So whether you have a list of 50 or a million, it's worth revisiting your strategy and changing things to see what might be a hit and what might be a miss. If your open rates are going down, take a look at the overall campaign and try some new things. Don't just let your list die a slow and humble death without trying to breathe life back into it.

By the way, the corporate companies often refer to email marketing campaigns as email marketing initiatives which is larger in scope and involves not only an email campaign but many online marketing strategies to support it.

Tips for your email marketing.

·        Make your subject line credible and straightforward.

o       Examples include: News from mywebsite.com. mywebsite.com invitation. I know it’s not super clever but the open rates for emails with the company name in the subject line stand a better chance of getting opened and not sent to the junk mail bin.

o       Words like “shop” or too vague subject lines just don’t make the cut.

o       More straightforward subject lines are less likely to end up as spam.

See the rest of the email marketing article