If you are building an email list for your online bookstore and wondering whether it will actually be worth the effort, the answer is almost certainly yes - but only if you understand what good performance looks like and structure your emails accordingly. Here are the benchmarks and what drives them.
The Open Rate Benchmark for Bookstore Emails
Bookstore newsletters consistently outperform the average across most retail categories. While general e-commerce email open rates hover around 15-20%, a well-managed bookstore newsletter can expect open rates of 25-40%. The reason is straightforward: book buyers opt into bookstore emails with genuine enthusiasm. They are not grudgingly signing up for a discount code - they are subscribers who want to hear about books. That intrinsic interest in the content is the single biggest driver of strong open rates.
To achieve rates in this range, the key factors are:
- List quality over list size: Subscribers who joined because they genuinely wanted your content open at far higher rates than people who were incentivized to sign up by a discount.
- Consistent, predictable cadence: Once a week or once every two weeks is generally optimal. More frequent than that risks fatigue; less frequent and subscribers forget who you are.
- Subject lines that feel personal and specific: "5 books to read if you loved anxious people" dramatically outperforms "New arrivals in stock this week."
New Arrivals vs. Reading Recommendations: Which Performs Better?
This is one of the most consistent findings in book retail email marketing: reading recommendations outperform new arrivals emails in click-through rate, often significantly.
Here is why. A new arrivals email is functionally a catalog update. It tells subscribers what is in stock, but it does not help them decide what to buy. The subscriber still has to do the work of evaluating whether any of these titles are right for them.
A reading recommendations email does that work for the subscriber. It says: "Here are three books I think you specifically will love, and here is why." It creates an editorial voice - a trusted curator - rather than a storefront. Readers respond to curation. It is the same reason BookTok works: people trust a voice that has clearly read and thought about the books, not just listed them.
The Power of Genre Segmentation
The highest-performing bookstore emails of all are segmented recommendations - emails sent only to subscribers who have indicated interest in a specific genre. A romance reader who receives "Our 5 favorite second-chance romances right now" from your store is far more likely to open, click, and buy than the same reader receiving a general-interest new arrivals email.
Platforms like Klaviyo make genre segmentation manageable even for small stores. When a subscriber joins your list, ask them one question: "What do you like to read?" Segment accordingly. The increase in click-through rates is worth the modest additional setup time.
What to Do With This Information
Start with a reading recommendations format. Write as if you are a knowledgeable bookseller making personal suggestions - because that is exactly what a good bookstore email should feel like. Keep your list clean (remove non-openers after 90 days), segment by genre as soon as you have enough subscribers to make it meaningful, and measure open rate and click-through rate separately. Click-through rate is ultimately the metric that translates into revenue.
A 30% open rate on a 500-person list of genuine book lovers is a very good starting position.