Generally, campaign performance should be gauged against prior campaigns to the same audience.  How have your recent broadcasts performed versus your prior broadcasts using your old system?

When clients ask me for benchmarks, I say it varies by audience.  When a client has purely opted-in readers their open rates are much higher than one who is sending to a) old subscribers or b) a list gathered from other sources, such as loaded from business cards gathered from a conference.

Generally speaking, open rates above 8% are good, anything higher than 15% is excellent.

Retailer’s broadcasts to consumers generally hit the 3% to 5% mark. Business to business is usually double that.  Again, a fully opted in list should expect opens above 10% or higher.

When I look at who is opening, I also check those who are showing unusually high opens, like over 20 times because that indicates that this person is either a) very interested or b) forwarding the information on to their friends colleagues and THEIR FRIEND’S opens are registering under the original person’s userID.

Finally, opens and views are counted every time the email message loads (with images), so that includes each time you preview your newsletter.