Bounce rate and unsubscribe rate are your two clearest early-warning signals for list health and deliverability. This page collects the current public benchmarks so you can see what normal looks like and where your numbers should sit.
is the average email bounce rate across industries (GetResponse, 2024). A healthy permission-based list stays under 2%; anything above 5% signals a deliverability problem. The average unsubscribe rate sits between 0.15% and 0.22%.
Unsubscribe rate by industry
Mailchimp calculated these averages from billions of emails sent to lists of 1,000+ subscribers (data last updated December 2023). Unsubscribe rates are tightly clustered, so a difference of even a tenth of a percent is meaningful at scale.
| Industry segment | Avg. unsubscribe rate |
|---|---|
| Business & Finance | 0.15% |
| Non-Profits | 0.18% |
| Education & Training | 0.18% |
| Ecommerce | 0.19% |
| All users (average) | 0.22% |
Bounce & deliverability benchmarks
| Metric | Benchmark | Source (sample) |
|---|---|---|
| Average bounce rate, all industries | 2.33% | GetResponse 2024 report (4.4B messages) |
| Average bounce rate, 2020–2024 study | 1.98% | Selzy benchmarks 2024 |
| Healthy bounce threshold | under 2% | industry consensus |
| Warning threshold (investigate) | above 5% | industry consensus |
| Average deliverability rate | 98.4% | Omnisend 2025 (20B+ campaign emails, 27,000+ brands) |
| Campaign unsubscribe rate | 0.20% | Omnisend 2025 |
| Automated-email unsubscribe rate | 0.59% | Omnisend 2025 |
Automated emails carry a higher unsubscribe rate (0.59% vs 0.20%) because they often reach subscribers early in the relationship, right after sign-up, a cart, or a first purchase, before people have settled into your sending rhythm.
How to read these numbers
Bounce rate is the share of sent emails that could not be delivered, split into hard bounces (permanent failures such as invalid addresses) and soft bounces (temporary issues like a full mailbox). Unsubscribe rate is the share of recipients who opt out. Both are measured against delivered or sent volume, so a sudden spike usually points to a list-quality or relevance problem rather than one bad campaign.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good email bounce rate?
Under 2% is healthy for a permission-based list. Between 2% and 5% is worth watching, and anything above 5% signals a deliverability issue, typically an aging list, poor collection practices, or missing authentication.
What is a good unsubscribe rate?
Below 0.2% is excellent and under 0.5% is acceptable. The all-industry average is about 0.22% (Mailchimp, 2023). A rate consistently above 0.5% usually means sending frequency or content relevance needs attention.
Why did my unsubscribe rate suddenly increase?
Since 2024, Gmail and Apple require one-click list-unsubscribe on bulk mail, which has made opting out easier and nudged reported unsubscribe rates upward across the board. A jump can also follow a frequency increase, a list import, or a poorly targeted send.
What is the difference between a hard bounce and a soft bounce?
A hard bounce is a permanent delivery failure (the address does not exist); remove these immediately. A soft bounce is temporary (mailbox full, server down) and may clear on its own, but repeated soft bounces should be pruned.
How do I lower my bounce rate?
Use double opt-in, verify addresses at capture, remove hard bounces after every send, re-engage or suppress inactive contacts, and authenticate your domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC so mailbox providers trust your mail.