# Why Are Your Mailchimp Open Rates Low?

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## Table of contents

- What are open rates?
- Why are open rates important?
- What is a good open rate in Mailchimp?
- Why are your Mailchimp open rates low?
- How to improve your open rates with Mailmodo?
- Final takeaway

You are writing great email content and avoiding spam words to be safe from spam filters. So why is your **Mailchimp open rate** still low?

  

The answer to that question either resides in the overall performance of your ESP or bad email practices from your end. This guide discusses both the scenarios and the ways to deal with them to improve your **Mailchimp open rate.**

## What are open rates?

The number of subscribers who opened your email out of the total number of people who received your email is called the open rate of that email. Here is an easy formula to calculate your open rate.

<div class="highlight-gray"><p><strong>📭 Open rate</strong> = (Number of people who opened your email / Total number of people who received your email) x 100</p></div>





## Why are open rates important?

Open rates are very important as they can give you an idea about what is working and what is not. Here is how.

  

-   If you have good email open rates, it means that your audience resonates with you and you’re, sending them personalized emails with compelling subject lines.
    
-   On the other hand, bad email open rates indicate that your content isn’t serving what your audience is looking for. Your content doesn’t appeal to them, so you may need to switch gears and start personalizing your content and writing compelling subject lines. 
    

So if you start working on improving your Mailchimp open rates, what should be a realistic goal you should aspire to achieve? To answer this question, let's look at the average open rates across multiple industries.

## What is a good open rate in Mailchimp?

A good email open rate depends on the industry, but a 17% open rate is considered the average of all industries. Here are the email open rates of a few popular industries.

| Industry | Open rates (%) |
|--|--|
| Electronics | 19 |
| Business | 20 |
|Software|20|
|Health|21|
|Retail|23|
|Newsletters|21|

So currently, if your open rates are any lower than 17%, here are the possible causes for it.

<div class="highlight-gray"><p><strong>💡 Related read: </strong><a href=https://www.mailmodo.com/guides/mailchimp-review/>Mailchimp Review: Is This Email Marketing Tool Worth the Hype?</a></p></div>


## Why are your Mailchimp open rates low?

Here are the possible reasons for your low Mailchimp open rates.

### 1. Poor deliverability rates

One of the key factors of great open rates is having great deliverability rates. But from a study conducted by [Email Deliverability Report](https://www.emaildeliverabilityreport.com/en/deliverability/mailchimp/2022/04/), it was found that Mailchimp has a 14% spam rate and an 81% inbox placement rate. That 14% spam email rate may increase even higher due to the potentially unregulated spammers on free Mailchimp plans.

### 2. Not testing your subject lines

Is your subject line compelling enough to make users forget about all emails in their inbox and click on yours? If not, you have some work to do. Email inbox is a warzone where different businesses are at war to grab the user’s attention. So you have to make sure that your subject line is personalized to make it stand out from the rest.

  
<div class="highlight-gray"><p><strong>💡 Related read: </strong><a href="https://www.mailmodo.com/guides/email-subject-line-tester/">8 email subject line testers to elevate your open rates</a></p></div>

### 3. Ending up in the promotions tab

[Email Tool Tester](https://www.emailtooltester.com/en/email-deliverability-test/) found that many Mailchimp emails end up in the Promotions tab. This isn't good news for email marketers as 19.9% of users never check the Gmail promotions tab. Obviously, you don't want to get ignored by nearly 20% of your audience, but the current mechanics of Mailchimp don't seem to support solving this problem.

### 4. Not personalizing your content

A study done by McKinsey & Company found that [71%](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-value-of-getting-personalization-right-or-wrong-is-multiplying) of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized experiences. So to encourage personalization in your emails, you need to stop sending email blasts immediately.

<div class="highlight-gray"><p><strong>💡 Related read: </strong><a href="https://www.mailmodo.com/guides/email-personalization/">An ultimate guide to creating personalized emails</a></p></div>

## How to improve your open rates with Mailmodo?

Here are the top ways to skyrocket your open rates with Mailmodo.

### ✅ Expert consultation on email deliverability

New to email deliverability? No worries. We have email deliverability experts who will be more than happy to guide you and answer any questions. We won’t leave you guessing alone about how to improve your deliverability. Mailmodo with its tools and experts will make sure you reach reasonable deliverability rates. Read how [SBNRI](https://www.mailmodo.com/case-studies/sbnri/) improved their email deliverability with Mailmodo, leading to a 16% increase in open rates. 


### ✅ Advanced personalization and automation tools

Leave all your worries about personalization and automation aside with our easy-to-use automation and personalization features. We allow you to send personalized images, buttons, names, live updating content, etc.

### ✅ Easy segmentation features

We made it super easy to create segments based on how users react to your emails. You can segment people based on user activity, like who filled your form. Or you can also segment people based on their user properties such as names, age, gender, etc. You are free to use any method that is suitable for your needs.

### ✅ AMP emails that keep your users excited

AMP emails aren’t widely adopted yet, despite them being super powerful. So if you jump in on the trend now and use them for your campaigns, you’ll make a lasting impression on your users, and it will keep them excited for your upcoming emails. AMP emails have [proven](https://www.mailmodo.com/case-studies/) time again for improving email conversion rates drastically.

<div class="highlight-gray"><p><strong>🔍 Compare: </strong><ul><li><a href="https://www.mailmodo.com/comparison/mailchimp-alternative/">Mailchimp vs Mailmodo</a></li><li><a href="https://www.mailmodo.com/comparison/mailchimp-vs-constantcontact-vs-mailmodo/">Mailchimp vs Constant Contact</a></li><li><a href="https://www.mailmodo.com/comparison/mailchimp-vs-brevo-vs-mailmodo/">Mailchimp vs Sendinblue</a></li></ul></div>


<div class="inline_cta"><div class="ctaBox"><div class="leftdiv"><p>Create and send AMP emails without coding in minutes</p><div class="button_container"><a href="https://manage.mailmodo.com/auth/signup?utm_content=inline-cta-s&utm_term=/guides/mailchimp-open-rate/"><button class="primary_button">Try Mailmodo for free</button></a></div></div><div class="rightdiv"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/mailmodo/image/upload/v1712747193/strapi/Group_1110165064_1_57b7027899.png" width="290" height="230" alt="cta-img"/></div></div><div class="gradient"></div></div>

## Final takeaway

Don't get discouraged about your open rates too much, as you can improve them with the right tools and strategies.

  
If you're curious about more strategies to take your open rates to the moon, then check out our guide on [ways to increase your email open rates](https://www.mailmodo.com/guides/increase-open-rate/) that discusses popular ways like using compelling subject lines and also lesser discussed strategies like writing a great preheader text.

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**Author: Suryanarayan Pal**

Suryanarayan has 7 years of experience in email marketing for B2B, SaaS, and e-commerce, specializing in email deliverability and project management.

