What's a Good Email Open Rate for Beauty and Personal Care Brands in 2026?

A good email open rate for beauty and personal care brands in 2026 is around 36.2%, per Sendtric's 2026 benchmark data, essentially in line with, though just under, the 36.5% all-industry average. Clicks are where the category actually lags: its click-through rate sits at roughly 1.27%, among the lower rates Sendtric tracks across industries.

The Actual Numbers

• Beauty & personal care open rate: approximately 36.2%
• Beauty & personal care click-through rate: approximately 1.27%
• All-industry average open rate: approximately 36.5%, for comparison

Opens Are Average. Clicks Are the Real Problem.

Beauty brands typically send at high frequency, with frequent product drops, flash sales, and restock announcements, which keeps the brand in front of subscribers often enough that opens stay close to the all-industry average. But that same frequency means each email competes with the next one arriving a few days later, which dilutes the urgency any single send can create by the time a subscriber decides whether to click.

A Second Benchmark Points the Same Direction

Flowium's separate 2026 benchmarking work independently names beauty and personal care, alongside entertainment and media, as among its lowest-performing categories for average open rates. The two reports don't use identical methodology or measure the identical metric, but the direction agrees: beauty consistently lands near the bottom of these benchmark sets, whichever specific number a given report leads with.

Why High Frequency Cuts Both Ways

Sending often keeps a beauty brand top of mind, which helps explain why opens don't fall far below average even with aggressive send cadences. But it also means a subscriber who doesn't click today has little reason to feel they're missing out, since a similar offer or product announcement is likely to land again within days — weakening the single biggest driver of a click: the sense that this particular email matters right now.

What Separates Beauty Brands With Better Click Rates

• Segmenting by purchase history or stated skin, hair, or product preferences instead of sending one blast to the full list regardless of relevance.
• Using email specifically for replenishment timing, flagging when a previously purchased product is likely running low, rather than relying only on new-arrival promotion.
• Reserving flash-sale urgency for a subset of the list that hasn't engaged recently, instead of running the same urgency message across every send.

Where the Opportunity Actually Sits

Because beauty brands already send often enough to keep opens near average, the growth lever isn't sending more email, it's making each send worth clicking for the specific subscriber receiving it. A brand that moves even a third of its list from generic blasts to purchase-history-based segments should expect its click-through rate to move well before its open rate does, since segmentation targets relevance rather than deliverability or subject-line wording.

Bottom Line

A ~36% open rate is normal for beauty and personal care, so don't chase that number alone. The real lever is click-through rate: if you're clicking meaningfully below 1.27%, fix segmentation and relevance before you touch subject lines.

Source: Sendtric, Average Email Open Rates by Industry in 2026; Flowium, Email Marketing Benchmarks for 2026.