Beware of Klaviyo's Dangerous Email Benchmarks: Campaigns & Metrics

Before we begin, my main beef is with this viewport you’re presented with when navigating to the campaigns section:

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What Klaviyo's Benchmarks Actually Show

Before I get into why I don't think you should chase these, here's what Klaviyo's own 2026 benchmark data actually says, so we're arguing from the same numbers.

For campaign sends: the average open rate sits at 31%, with the top 10% of senders hitting 45.1%. Average click rate is 1.69% (top 10%: 3.38%), and average placed order rate is a slim 0.16% (top 10%: 0.36%).

Flows perform very differently: average click rate is 5.58% (top 10%: 10.48%), and average placed order rate is 2.11% (top 10%: 4.3%) - more than 13x the campaign average. Flows generated roughly 41% of total email revenue from just 5.3% of total sends in 2026.

So if you're benchmarking yourself, at minimum benchmark campaigns against campaigns and flows against flows - lumping them together (which the in-app view does by default in places) tells you very little.

Now here's why I still don't think chasing these numbers is the right game to play.

Source: Email marketing benchmarks 2026: open rates, click and conversion rates | Klaviyo, also see Klaviyo's benchmarks hub

First, let me cut Klaviyo some slack. Despite the provocative headline: Klaviyo is simply aggregating statistics here and benchmarking them against other accounts in their ecosystem.

My issue here is with the “Good”, “Fair”, “Bad” denominators that appear underneath each metric, and why they’re dangerous.

Below is a high-level overview of why you shouldn’t be led astray by these statistics, and in some cases, you wouldn’t even want to improve them (I’m dead serious).

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Average Open Rate

Everybody knows that Apple's Mail Privacy Protection update diminished the reliability of open rates as an indicator of engagement.

The metric itself isn't completely redundant for ISP-level deliverability analysis, but it's less relevant than ever, and making business decisions solely based on open rates is a huge mistake as we enter a new privacy-focused era.

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Average Click Rate

The theory behind click rates is that it tells you how engaging your content is.

But aggregated in this way, it can lack context as to the goal of each individual campaign.

What if you send an email with the content in the body of the email itself to be consumed rather than encouraging subscribers to click to the site?

What about if your goal is to generate replies, not clicks?

And how about if I cast a wider net, lower click rate, but increase total traffic (and revenue) back to my store (like in this example)?

My opinion: focus on total clicks and returning traffic the majority of the time MoM, but never forget the objective behind every individual send.
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Placed Order Rate

Not every email is designed to sell.

Need I say more about this?

Okay, I will.

Here’s an email we sent out for a client that generated amazing engagement.

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This had a low click rate and moderate placed order rate, but it generated several hundred responses and improved subsequent inbox placement.

Is this email a failure or success, by Klaviyo’s standards?

Summary: analyse the objective behind each individual email and don’t aim for multiple objectives at the same time.

Revenue Per Recipient (RPR)

If the intention of your email is to sell, then this metric can be valuable.

However, aggregated in this manner, again, it assumes that the sole purpose of your marketing activities is to sell.

The easiest way to manipulate RPR is to create a slew of discount codes and send them to your list.

Does it mean you'll be more profitable?

No - you'll probably reduce LTV and frontload revenue.

Read: Revenue Per Recipient (RPR): Why We Tell Clients to Ignore It

Concluding thoughts

I have reduced open rates, click rates, placed order rates and revenue per recipient for several clients and improved total revenue and business outcomes for several clients.

Magic? No - just understanding the brand KPIs and goals, and thinking strategically about how my tactics will impact wider-business goals, not channel-level vanity metrics.

How did I do this? By casting a wider net with my segmentation strategy, re-engaging older customers, while simultaneously lowering all of the above metrics.

Business outcomes improved dramatically, and email-specific metrics declined.

Ask yourself, if you’re a brand owner, which is more important?

Trends are useful tools, but without context, they often lack purpose.

Choose objectives for each campaign, and try to measure the success of each on an individual level, while paying attention to macro trends.
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FAQ

What's a good Klaviyo open rate?

‍Klaviyo's own 2026 data puts the average campaign open rate at 31%, with the top 10% of senders hitting 45.1%. But as this article argues, open rate has been a weaker signal since Apple's Mail Privacy Protection update inflated it artificially - a "good" number here doesn't tell you as much as it used to.

What's a good Klaviyo click rate?

‍Average campaign click rate is 1.69% (top 10%: 3.38%). Flows perform much better - 5.58% average, 10.48% for the top 10% - which is one reason to weight flow performance more heavily than campaign performance when judging overall account health.

What's a good placed order rate in Klaviyo?

‍Campaign average is 0.16% (top 10%: 0.36%). Flows convert far higher - 2.11% average, 4.3% for the top 10%. But as this article argues, not every email is designed to sell, so a low placed order rate on a re-engagement or content-only send isn't automatically a failure.

How does Klaviyo decide if a metric is Good, Fair or Bad?

‍The labels appear to be based on percentile rankings against a peer group of similar accounts, not fixed thresholds - so "Bad" means "worse than your comparison group," not "objectively bad" in any absolute sense. Worth keeping in mind before reacting to a red label.

Should I trust Klaviyo's in-app benchmark labels?

‍Use them as a rough sense check, not a scorecard. This article's whole argument is that judging every send against the same aggregated Good/Fair/Bad labels ignores the actual objective of each campaign - a re-engagement email and a flash-sale campaign shouldn't be judged by the same yardstick.

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