2025 Email Marketing Benchmarks Report: Info & Coaching Industry-Specific Data

I’ve compiled email marketing benchmarks and KPIs across the entire education industry and organized them neatly by revenue level ($0- 100K, $100K- $1M, $1M- $10M, $10M- $50M, and $50M+).

This education industry email marketing benchmark report gives you a clear roadmap of what KPIs and benchmarks you should be reaching at each revenue level. You’ll know which ones you should be hitting today, as well as which ones to hit next after you scale! You’ll see metrics such as list growth rate, earnings per subscriber (EPS), revenue from email, average email list size, and more…

As someone who has generated over $50,000,000 online working with leading education, course creators and coaching businesses, like Teri Ijeoma, PESI Inc., Psychotherapy Networker, Pilot Institute, Live Traders and several others whose names I can’t mention, I get to spend a lot of time looking at what the top education businesses are doing with their email marketing, and I get to see industry data and insights very few others do.

The data is drawn from available education, course creator, coaching, and information business industry email marketing reports between 2022–2025, with a specific focus on how these businesses use email marketing to grow their revenue and scale their businesses.

Contents hide

1 Overview:

2 $0–100K Annual Revenue Businesses

3 $100K–$1M Annual Revenue Businesses

4 $1M–$10M Annual Revenue Businesses

5 $10M–$50M Annual Revenue Businesses

6 Sources and Derivation of Benchmarks

7 Conclusion

Overview:

While industry-specific benchmarks for education, online course, and coaching businesses are not widely published, we can draw on available data and adjacent industry trends. Below we outline key email marketing KPIs – email’s share of total revenue, earnings per subscriber (EPS), and list growth rate – and how they tend to vary by business size. (Where direct data for this niche is limited, we note general benchmarks from related sectors like e-commerce or online businesses for context.)

Key Points:

Revenue from Email: Likely ranges from 10–20% for small businesses (0–100k revenue) to 50%+ for larger ones ($50M+), with high-ticket offerings boosting percentages.
Earnings Per Subscriber (EPS): Estimated at $0.10–$0.50/month for early-stage businesses, potentially reaching $3.00+/month for mature ones.
List Growth Rate: Smaller businesses may see 5–10% monthly growth, while larger ones trend toward <1%, with an industry average around 2.5%.
Data Limitation: Specific benchmarks by revenue stage are scarce, so estimates are based on general industry trends and user-provided insights.
High-Ticket Impact: Education and coaching businesses often achieve higher EPS due to premium course and coaching prices.

$0–100K Annual Revenue Businesses

Early-stage education or coaching businesses often have small lists and are still establishing their email marketing. As a result, their email performance metrics can be on the lower end initially:

Revenue from Email: 10–20% of company revenue.
- Newer entrepreneurs often underutilize email, so the percentage is lower. Plus, newer entrepreneurs are also still finding content market fit and product market fit.
Monthly Earnings per Subscriber (EPS): $0.10 – $0.50 per subscriber per month.
- In the very early stages, EPS may be well below $1 per subscriber per month (for example, $0.10–$0.50) due to limited product offerings and trust-building.
- As a benchmark, use $1 per subscriber per month as a rough goal for a healthy email list. This means a list of 1,000 should generate about $1,000/month if fully monetized. Initially, course creators & education businesses often fall short of that, but as email strategy improves (e.g. through effective welcome sequences and promotions), EPS should climb toward the $1 mark. (For perspective, nonprofit organizations only saw about $2.63 per subscriber per year in email revenue, i.e. ~$0.22/month, but that’s a different sector with smaller transaction sizes.)
- Course and coaching businesses with high-ticket offers can ultimately exceed the $1/month benchmark once they implement strong email funnels. Typically, this happens though after they’ve already established a different sales channel like organic social media, paid ads, and outbound sales at this revenue phase.
List Growth Rate: Industry-wide, an average email list growth rate is around 2.5% per month.
- In practical terms, this means a list of 1,000 might net about 25 new subscribers a month after accounting for unsubscribes. Many marketing experts cite 1–3% list growth per month as a typical range.
- New course creators often aim higher during launch phases (e.g. a few hundred new opt-ins from webinars or promotions can spike growth). If you are prepping for a launch, you should aim for 5-10% list growth to build bigger interest for your course/product launch.
- The key is that even at small scale, consistent list-building is vital – early entrepreneurs should leverage content and freebies to build their list, since audience size directly enables more email revenue.

$100K–$1M Annual Revenue Businesses

In this revenue range, businesses have a more established audience and product suite. Email marketing typically becomes a significant driver of sales as the business scales:

Revenue from Email: 20-30% of company revenue.
- Many businesses making six to seven figures report roughly 20–30% of total revenue coming from email marketing once they have an engaged list. This aligns with general benchmarks; for instance, Klaviyo (an email platform) notes 27% is common for companies using their platform, and email agencies often target ~30% of revenue via email as a sign of a solid program.
- In the education/coaching space, email is often the primary channel for conversions (e.g. promoting webinars, online course launches, etc.), so hitting the higher end of that range is feasible with good strategy.
- Businesses in this bracket should expect email to be a major revenue contributor – if it’s only, say, 10%, that’s a clear monetization gap.
Monthly Earnings per Subscriber: $0.50–$1.00 per subscriber per month.
- $0.50 – $1.00/month is the norm, approaching the industry goal of $1/month with improved funnels, messaging, offers, and consistent traffic. As the email list and customer value grow, EPS tends to approach the $1 per subscriber per month benchmark for well-run programs. For example, a business with 5,000 subscribers and $5k/month in email-driven sales is at $1 EPS. Many course creators work toward this level by nurturing their list (through valuable content emails punctuated by promotional offers).
- Some achieve higher EPS by selling premium courses or coaching packages. It’s not unusual to see $0.50–$1.50 per subscriber/month in this revenue range, depending on price points and email frequency. (As a reality check, $1 EPS is a strong target often quoted in digital marketing, though not every business hits it consistently.)
- If EPS is significantly below ~$0.50 at this stage, it suggests either the list isn’t being monetized well or the subscribers are not the right audience, and there’s room for optimization. If you have $1 EPS but email contributes <20%, that’s either a frequency problem, volume problem or both -> Send more emails and grow your email list.
List Growth Rate: 2-3% per month.
- With a larger existing list, percentage growth may stabilize a bit. A few percent growth per month is still a good rule of thumb. 2–3% monthly growth (net of unsubscribes) is a reasonable benchmark in this range. For example, a business with 10,000 subscribers might net +200–300 subscribers a month through ongoing marketing. Achieving this might involve strategies like Social Media Pre-CTAs and Post-CTAs, content upgrades, partnerships, or moderate ad spend.
- If the business ramps up marketing, absolute gains could be higher (e.g. a big summit or viral lead magnet might add thousands in one go), but on average, single-digit % growth is typical.
- It’s also important to monitor churn – unsubscribe rates per email send average around 0.2% in the education/training sector (mailchimp.com), so growth efforts need to outpace inevitable list attrition. Overall, businesses in this bracket should see steady list expansion, though not as explosively as in the very early stage.

$1M–$10M Annual Revenue Businesses

Businesses at this scale usually have robust email marketing operations (segmentation, automation, regular campaigns) and sizable lists. Benchmarks here often mirror “best practice” figures:

Revenue from Email: 30-40%
- It’s common for roughly 30–40% of total revenue to be driven by email marketing in this bracket. Many mid-market online businesses derive about one-third of their revenue from email. During key launches or promotions, this can spike higher – some companies see nearly half of sales come via email during big campaigns. For instance, a successful course launch might largely sell to the email list. Industry experts consider ~30% a healthy contribution of email to overall sales for a mature program.
- If a business in this range is below 20%, it likely means other channels dominate or the email strategy needs improvement. Conversely, exceeding ~40% consistently might indicate an extremely engaged audience or a model that relies almost entirely on email, such as a newsletter/media style business (many still sell courses/products), or a ‘lifestyle’ email business. (For comparison, e-commerce brands often report 20–35% of revenue from email, so a content/education business can be in that ballpark or a bit higher if they leverage email heavily.)
Monthly Earnings per Subscriber: $1 per subscriber per month.
- Some exceed this, however. For example, a $3M/year business with ~25,000 subscribers attributing ~$80k/month to email is at ~$3.20 EPS, which is high but conceivable if high-ticket offers are sold.
- Generally, expect EPS in the $1± range as a baseline if you’re business is in the $1M to $10M range. Some sophisticated marketers manage >$2 per subscriber/month by frequent launches, upsells, or membership models (where subscribers have very high lifetime value). However, these figures vary – if a business sells mainly lower-priced courses, the EPS might be a bit lower, whereas a coaching firm selling $5,000 packages might see very high revenue per subscriber during promotional periods.
- The key is that EPS should be consistently monitored at this stage as a “north star” metric – a rising EPS indicates effective monetization of the list. An EPS above the $1 mark is solid, while below $1 indicates time to improve your offer strategy & subscriber engagement. Great email automations typically help in this phase to boost EPS past $1, completely on autopilot.
List Growth Rate: 2-3% per month.
- By this stage, the email list is large (tens or even hundreds of thousands of subscribers), and percentage growth naturally slows due to Total Addressable Market Size (TAM) decreasing.
- An average net growth rate of ~2% per month might be expected, with well-performing programs still aiming for the higher end of the typical 2–3% range. For example, a 50,000-subscriber list might net +1,000 subscribers in a month through ongoing lead generation to offset churn. Absolute growth numbers can be substantial (some brands add several thousand subscribers monthly via paid advertising, content marketing, and referrals), but as a percentage of an already large base it will look like a few percent. It’s worth noting that even large lists experience attrition; keeping unsubscribe rates low (the industry-average unsubscribe rate is ~0.2% per email send) and periodically cleaning inactive contacts helps maintain a higher effective growth rate.
- In summary, companies in the $1M–$10M range should focus on scalable list-building tactics (affiliate partnerships, bigger ad budgets, etc.) to continue growing, but a net growth of a couple percent monthly is generally a solid benchmark at scale. Anything well above 3% per month sustained at this size would be unusually high growth, likely due to aggressive marketing spend or viral campaigns.

$10M–$50M Annual Revenue Businesses

At the upper end, we are looking at very large course marketplaces, education platforms, or coaching enterprises – or well-known influencers with massive followings. Data is sparser here, but we can extrapolate from enterprise trends:

Revenue from Email: 30-40%/monthly revenue.
- Many large direct-to-consumer brands (for example, in retail/e-commerce) still report ~20–40% of sales attributed to email marketing, and we can expect similar or higher for big education businesses that rely on nurturing leads. In this space, email often works alongside other channels (paid ads, affiliates, etc.), so the percentage might moderate toward the 20–30% range if a company has diversified marketing.
- But all of those other channels still cost money; ads are expensive, affiliates dig into margins, so do live events. The top education companies are relying heavily on email marketing to scale their profits. For instance, some major online course launches lean heavily on email sequences and affiliate emails – a launch could see 50%+ of revenue via email when counting both the business’s list and affiliates’ email promotions.)
- As a stable benchmark, however, around one-quarter to one-third of total revenue from the email channel is common even for very large firms, according to cross-industry analyses. If an enterprise-level business sees much less than ~20% from email, it likely indicates heavier reliance on other channels – or potential to increase email’s role through better campaigns. Typically, this involves optimizing high-impact email flows and launching more offers.
Monthly EPS: $2 – $3 per subscriber per month.
- At this scale, EPS can vary widely based on business model. A large online learning platform selling many low-priced courses might have a huge list with a modest EPS (perhaps well under $1, because revenue per subscriber is diluted by the sheer volume of free subscribers who haven’t bought yet). Conversely, a high-end coaching conglomerate might maintain a more curated list of prospects and clients that yields several dollars per subscriber monthly. As a general yardstick, achieving around $2+ per subscriber per month remains an excellent benchmark even at large scale.
- Many enterprise email programs focus more on segmentation and personalization at this level, trying to increase customer lifetime value. It’s not publicly documented for this specific niche, but it’s reasonable to assume EPS might hover around the ~$2 level on average, with some companies lower (due to broad top-of-funnel lists) and some higher (due to strong monetization of a core engaged segment). EPS is the “north star” metric to watch – if it’s trending up or holding strong as the list grows, the email program is doing well.
- Large businesses should also measure cohort EPS (earnings per new subscriber over time) to ensure new leads are being converted effectively – this is key for cashflow, and identifying where you can take risks to expand the business (M&As, entering new market segments, launching new sales channels like referal or affiliate programs, etc.)
List Growth Rate: 1-2% per month.
- In the $10M-$50M tier, growth rates in percentage terms tend to be lower (simply due to base effect). Net growth might be on the order of 1–2% per month for a mature large list, which annually would be ~12–25% growth if achieved consistently. This aligns with the notion that 1–3% monthly is standard across industries, and larger companies often sit near the lower end of that range unless investing heavily in acquisition. For example, a company with 500,000 subscribers might net +5,000 (1%) to +10,000 (2%) subscribers in a month after accounting for churn. Achieving more would require significant marketing spend (e.g. constant lead-generation ads, big viral campaigns, etc.).
- It’s also worth noting that list churn is an ongoing factor – even if gross new sign-ups are 20,000/month, if 15,000 old contacts unsubscribe or go inactive, the net is +5,000. Keeping growth in the black at scale means continuously feeding the funnel.
- Large organizations might also run re-engagement campaigns or list purges, which can make growth look flat in some months but improve list quality. In general, steady positive growth is expected; a plateau or decline in list size would be a red flag. Thus, enterprise benchmarks focus on quality growth: maintaining a pipeline of new engaged subscribers to replace churn and expand reach, with ~2% net monthly growth being a solid achievement for a very large list.

Sources and Derivation of Benchmarks

Email % of Revenue: According to Klaviyo’s data from over 167k businesses, email typically contributes roughly 20–40% of total revenue for brands using its platform. Email marketing agencies similarly note aiming for ~30% of revenue from email, with top cases reaching 40–50% during peak periods. These figures, while often cited for e-commerce, are applicable to online course and coaching businesses given their heavy reliance on email for nurturing leads and driving sales. (If anything, creators with strong personal brands can lean even more on email – but 30% is a good benchmark to start with.) We derived the segmented ranges above by assuming smaller businesses start below the industry average (due to less developed email strategies) and grow into the 20–40% range as they mature. The notion that mature > new in email revenue share is supported by expert commentary.
Earnings per Subscriber (EPS): The oft-quoted rule of thumb in digital marketing is “$1 per subscriber per month” in revenue. This comes from practitioners’ experience and is meant as a convenient benchmark for a well-monetized list (not a guarantee or universal truth). We cited a Leadpages marketing guide that explicitly recommends $1/subscriber/month as an initial target. In practice, EPS varies: a nonprofit email list yields only a few dollars per subscriber per year on average, whereas a savvy info-product marketer might exceed $1/month by selling premium offerings. Because hard data by industry is scarce, we anchored on the $1 guideline and adjusted for business size based on logical expectations (lower for new businesses, approaching or exceeding $1 as businesses optimize their email sales funnels). This aligns with advice from email marketing experts who treat EPS as a key performance metric over time. All EPS values are expressed in USD per subscriber per month.
List Growth Rate: Industry reports from email service providers indicate that email lists grow at an average of about 2.5% per month (Data & Marketing Association study) and typically 1–3% per month is considered “normal” growth. We used these figures as a baseline. For segmentation by revenue, we reasoned that smaller businesses (with small lists) can temporarily exceed these averages through aggressive list building (since adding 200 subscribers to a 1,000 list is +20%), whereas very large businesses will often fall near the lower end of the range due to scale (adding 5,000 to 500k is 1%). These assumptions are supported qualitatively by observations in the field – e.g., small businesses can grow faster percentage-wise early on, but most companies settle into single-digit monthly growth in the long run. We also referenced unsubscribe rate benchmarks (Mailchimp data shows ~0.2% per send in Education industry) to illustrate that a portion of the list is lost continually. The net growth percentages given are after accounting for such churn. All growth rates mentioned are net monthly rates (new subscribers minus unsubscribes), in line with how email list growth is commonly measured.
Adjacent Industry Comparisons: We included comparable data primarily from e-commerce (since those benchmarks are well-documented and these businesses also sell online, making them a useful proxy). For example, the ~30% revenue-from-email figure is often cited in e-commerce contexts, and we’ve applied it to course/coaching businesses with justification. Additionally, we mentioned the M+R Benchmarks for nonprofits as a low-end contrast for EPS and revenue share (nonprofits saw 11% of online revenue from email and ~$2.63 per subscriber/year in 2024). While the creator economy isn’t the same as nonprofits, this comparison underscores how different business models yield different email outcomes – creators selling products will aim much higher than nonprofits asking for donations. We also leaned on general SMB email marketing research (e.g. Mailjet’s report) which highlights that smaller companies focus on opens while larger ones focus on revenue metrics – reinforcing our segmentation logic that as revenue grows, so does emphasis on monetization. Furthermore, industry-wide stats like email ROI (e.g. ~$36 return per $1 spent) and average open/click rates for Education (Mailchimp reports ~35.6% open, 3.0% click in Education/Training sector), while not the focus here, give credence that this sector sees strong engagement, which can translate to solid revenue if leveraged. All sources are cited inline, and the numbers presented have been derived or extrapolated from those sources with explanations.

Conclusion

In summary, email can be an extremely potent channel for education, course, and coaching businesses – often contributing a sizable chunk of revenue, with each subscriber on the list representing tangible monthly earnings. Use these benchmarks as guidelines: if your metrics are far below the averages for your revenue tier, it may signal an opportunity to improve your email strategy (through better content, segmentation, automations, or offers). And if you’re exceeding the benchmarks, that’s a great sign that your email marketing is performing above par in this industry. Always pair these external benchmarks with your own historical data to set realistic and ambitious goals for your email-driven revenue. For executive teams, these estimates offer a starting point to assess performance and drive growth, focusing on lead magnets, segmentation, and automation to meet or exceed the $1–2 EPS and 20%+ email revenue targets.

Sources: Recent industry benchmark reports and expert commentary were used to compile these figures, including Klaviyo’s benchmark analysis of 167k businesses, email marketing guides from ConvertKit (Kit) and Leadpages, the M+R 2025 nonprofit benchmarks, and aggregated statistics from email service providers (Mailchimp, EcoSend, Data & Marketing Association) on list performance. Each specific metric is annotated with its source and any necessary context on how it was calculated or why it’s relevant to education/course creators. These benchmarks will help inform a revenue diagnostic calculator by providing realistic target ranges for email KPIs based on a business’s size – allowing entrepreneurs to gauge whether their email marketing is underperforming or on track relative to peers.

Limitations:

Most sources still focus on industry benchmarks, not company size or revenue.
Additional insights had to be sourced from internal data between our partner brands, portfolio companies and clients.
High-ticket coaching businesses might achieve higher EPS with smaller lists. For instance, a $500 course at 0.5% conversion could mean $2.50 EPS per month with 10,000 email subscribers.
Lower-priced courses, like $50 at 5% conversion, also show $2.50 EPS with 10,000 email subscribers. It really depends on pricing and conversion rates, so EPS varies widely.

Key Citations: