One of the challenges I run into again and again in library marketing is this: we don’t have a lot of clear benchmarks.
If you’ve ever logged into an email platform and tried to compare your performance to other similar organizations, you’ve probably had to choose something like nonprofits, government, or education just to get a rough sense of where you stand. And even then… it never quite fits. Libraries are their own thing. We’re doing a little bit of everything—public service, education, community engagement—and none of those categories fully capture that.
So for years, we’ve been piecing together comparisons and doing our best to interpret them.
That’s why my ears perked up when I heard about benchmarks at the 2025 Library Marketing and Communications Conference. In a session focused on promoting digital resources—prompted, of course, by that familiar refrain, “I didn’t know you had that!”—the presenters shared email marketing benchmarks based specifically on libraries.
The data came from LibraryAware’s 2025 Email Marketing Benchmarks Report, which analyzed hundreds of thousands of emails sent to millions of subscribers over the course of a year. If you want to explore it yourself, you can view the full report here: Library email marketing benchmarks report
What struck me right away was how strong the open rates are. On average, nearly half of subscribers are opening library emails. That’s significant by any standard, and it reinforces something many of us already sense: people recognize their library in their inbox, and they’re interested enough to take a look.
But as I sat with the data a bit longer, another pattern emerged. While opens are high, clicks are much lower. People are opening emails, but they’re not always taking the next step.
And that feels familiar too. It shows up in the way people talk about digital resources—eBooks, databases, streaming services—often with some version of surprise. They’re intrigued when they hear about them. They’re even excited. But that doesn’t always translate into action.
Which is why this data feels so useful. It doesn’t just tell us how library email is performing; it highlights where the opportunity is. The challenge isn’t getting attention—we’re already doing that. The challenge is helping people move from interest to engagement in a way that feels clear and worthwhile.
For me, that shifts the conversation. Instead of wondering how we compare to nonprofits or higher ed, we can start looking at our own patterns. Where are we seeing strong engagement? Where are things dropping off? What happens between the moment someone opens an email and the moment they decide whether to click? Those are much more productive questions.
And maybe that’s the real value of having benchmarks like this. Not just as a scorecard, but as a way to better understand what’s actually happening—and where we might focus next.
Because if we can close that gap, even a little, we might start hearing fewer versions of “I didn’t know you had that,” and more moments where people are actively using—and valuing—what the library already offers.
